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She had to mount on a table 


(Page 132.) 


THE 


STORY OF COLETTE 


FROM THE FRENCH OF 

LA NEUVAINE DE COLETTE 



WITH SIX FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS AND THIRTY VIGNETTES 

BY JEAN CLAUDE 


NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1891 





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,S3«T3St 


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Copyright, 1888, 1891, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


All rights reserved. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, 


PAGE 

She had to mount on a table Frontispiece 

What occupation shall I find for myself to-morrow? .... 5 

My portrait is easy to sketch 10 

“ And if I have a vocation for a religious life ?” 14 

I am seated with my parchments before me ...... 18 

As an infant in long clothes she resembled no other baby . . .20 

My three sofas, for example, are all alike ...... 27 

I threw my arms about her 33 

My donkey perceives with great intelligence .... Facing 36 

It is he who has given me my book 40 

My dog had joined me 46 

“ My child,” she said, “ your case is not very serious ” . . Facing 48 

The altar I have made for my saint is superb .... Facing 51 

I was taking off the smallest particles of dust 53 

“ What is that ? ” she cried to me, throwing up her arms . . .60 

“In 1885, sir” Facing 67 

The doctor bowed his head without answering 70 

Benoite, who has been arranging his room 74 

At distant intervals a band of ravens swoops down 79 

Finally, I strained a cupful for him through a square of muslin . . 86 

Do you see that image of St. Joseph? 95 


4 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 


But the flow had begun, and had to have its course .... ioi 
A study from Nature 107 

Its grandeur dates from Louis XIII and its downfall from the Revo- no 
lution ............ 

The portrait 125 

“ Why are you all the time squabbling with your gentleman ? ” . .134 

Hymen 140 

To begin with, Jacques, be shocked if you like 146 

Then, without waiting, she attacked the fabulous bread . . . 153 

“As for you, mademoiselle,” he added, looking at the old maid . . 159 

With my little dagger I cut the name which occupies my thoughts . 165 

With Mademoiselle Colette as a guide 171 

He went on and on, raising his eyes to me every moment . Facing 177 

I held out my hand, unable to speak 182 

The writing of M. de Civreuse covered two sides 190 

The end 195 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


March i, 18 — . 

“ Keep me, O Lord, from dying of despair and ennui , 
and do not forget me, buried in this snow, which deep- 
ens every day.” 

I have so often said this little prayer that now my 
patience is exhausted, and I write it. Written words 
have so much more force, it seems to me ; they last 
longer. 

Also, because as a spoken phrase, which reverber- 
ates against the high sculptured ceilings of my rooms, 
takes more time than to think the 
words, so writing takes the most time 
of all, and 1 will write. This for to- 
day. Alas ! what occupation shall 
I find for myself to-morrow? 

My materials are scarcely 
sufficient, certainly not elegant. 

My journal has no back, the ink 
is dried up in the bottom of an old 
bottle which I have discovered, my pens are lost, and 
I have never had a sheet of paper here. Why should 
I have paper when I write to no one ? 

To reach the village is impossible. There are three 



6 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


feet of snow on a level, without speaking of the drifts, 
which are high enough to bury the stage-coach to the 
top of the wheel. 

I have read how prisoners have written with their 
own blood on pocket-handkerchiefs. I do not believe 
it, for the writing blots, and one can not read it. I 
know, for I have tried. 

But I have mixed my dried ink with water ; I have 
borrowed two long quills from the tail of a goose, who 
bore the loss with patience; and, by searching in clos- 
ets, I have found some old rolls of parchment, as yellow 
as saffron and as thick as cardboard, which, fortunately, 
were written only on one side — the other was left for 
me. I have the advantage of reading as I write. They 
relate to the quarrels and lawsuits between a certain 
sire, John Nicolas, and a lady of Haute- Pignon, whose 
rabbits ravaged his clover-fields, and the limits of whose 
fields were always in dispute. 

Give me, High Powers, as neighbor, a John Nicolas 
disposed to quarrel, and a domain whose borders may 
be always in dispute. 

Are there many people, I wonder, who realize the 
entire meaning of the word “ solitude ” ? 

“ Solitude,” says the dictionary, “ state of a person 
who is solitary ” ; and, again, “ solitary, without com- 
pany, not with others.” 

And that is all, no commentaries, no remarks, noth- 
ing which indicates that these words relate to one of 
the most terrible afflictions of existence, nothing which 
classifies, which says — there is solitude and solitude, 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


7 

and that the most terrible is not that of the Chartreux 
in their cells five feet square, who have themselves 
chosen these dimensions and their silence ; not even 
that of the Trappist monks, who dig their graves in 
their little gardens, as the years go on exchanging with 
each other encouraging words ; but mine, that of Co- 
lette d’Erlange, who did not choose her lot in life, and 
who is ready to rebel against her fate. 

Alone at eighteen, full of ideas, with no earthly 
being to tell them to ; to be gay alone, to be sad alone, 
to be angry alone — it is insupportable. 

It was less trying in summer, and even in autumn — 
trees and flowers understand much more than most 
people think. In the woods, in a nest of soft green 
moss, I had hundreds of voices which talked with me. 
The insects which crept over my cheek made me laugh 
by myself. Sometimes I rode on old Franqoise, the 
mare who turns the mill-wheel, and when she could go 
no farther I mounted on my big dog to finish my ride — 
my good “ One,” in whose shaggy coat I place my feet 
as I write, and who looks lovingly at me. Finally, 
there were the stars at night. I made confidants of all 
that look on our little corner of the earth, and, when I 
told them my vexations, more than one made me a 
sign of sympathy, which seemed to me like the look of 
a friendly eye. 

But this wind which has been blowing for six weeks, 
this blockade, and the voice of my aunt, which is like 
the wind, more disagreeable every day, combine to 
drive me nearly to despair. 


8 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


No imagination can resist it all. I have come to 
the end of all the romances I invent for myself ; 1 am 
afraid that my brain is empty, and that, when I need its 
aid in some extraordinary adventure, I shall call in 
vain. 

For I shall have my adventure some day — I can 
foretell it already. 

He is tall, dark, with black hair, straight eyebrows, 
and severe eyes. His appearance is gloomy, his voice 
is imperious, and in his glance there is a singular look — 
Oriental for its softness, but Oriental also in the sleepy 
blue light as of a cimeter, or like the recollection of a 
terrible past; for my adventure, to reach me, will have 
traveled, perhaps, by strange routes. 

His mustache will be small, a simple line of black 
pointed at the ends ; and all this will be radiant for me 
alone with smiles and an unlooked-for grace. 

Will my adventure come to me in the fields, in the 
brightness of the morning, or the quiet of the evening ? 
Will it come quietly or in the midst of confusion ? I 
do not know — I only know that it will come. 

It seemed to me more probable, and certainly nicer, 
to find it in the days of May or June. In those months 
I never passed near a hedge without looking to see what 
it concealed ; but I hope even now, and every morning, 
when I open my curtain, I look carefully to see if its feet 
have not left their traces on the snow under my window. 

When I see that nothing has come, I make excuses 
for it to myself — the weather is so bad, the paths so hard 
to find ! I wish it to arrive with its arms and legs unin- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


9 


jured ; I even praise it for not risking a sprain by com- 
ing a day too soon ; and I settle myself, sighing, to wait 
for a to-morrow, which has not yet dawned. 

Then, if my faith in the future becomes too weak, I 
take down one of the huge volumes which fill the book- 
cases, which have consoled me during rainy days, and I 
re-read the histories of the different but always marvel- 
ous princesses in past times, who were shut up in ruined 
towers, but managed to escape. The analogy between 
their lots and mine is really striking, and I only ask that 
mine may have the same conclusion. 

If the tower that I inhabit is not in ruins — two of the 
others have fallen — it may go any day. In the wood- 
work of my room there is a door which gives access to 
a secret staircase, and I have two eyes wide open and 
brilliant and as fit to recompense a hero as any that ever 
shone. 

I say this without vanity or conceit, for 1 have never 
appreciated the modesty that exclaims : What a beauti- 
ful horse ! what a wonderful rose ! but which severely 
forbids the same remark about a face which one has cer- 
tainly not made one’s self — simply because it is one's 
own. 

It is allowable, and even considered to be in good 
taste, for a person to abuse his nose, or to declare that 
his eyes are crooked ; but to say that the Creator has 
made them straight, the thought is horrible ! That is 
something of which every one should be profoundly 
ignorant, as if the smallest mirror or the first brook 
would not reveal it without the help of any one. 


IO 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


One leans over — one looks, and sees a beauty. Is it 
a crime, and would it be better to disturb the water so 
as to see wrinkles ? The stags and the does did so this 
summer when they came to drink, while I was dream- 
ing close by. When they had finished, they remained 
quite still for a moment, with their heads bent down, 
and their soft eyes fixed on their image ; then they 
turned and bounded off, simply happy to know that 
their brown coats were so shining, and their antlers so 
well branched. After the does, I looked, and saw all 
that they had seen, on the same blue background, flecked 
by the same light clouds, and when I turned, as they 
did, with a bound, it was no more disagreeable to me 
than to them to remember my shining skin. 

My portrait is easy to sketch, and resembles that of 


the gypsies all over the world, for my 



eyes are black, and my cheeks 


freckled, but I know the skin is 
white underneath. My nose is 
short, and seems to me to have 
been in such a hurry to see the 
world that it would not wait to 


be finished ; there was, alas ! no 
hurry at the rate my life runs ; and 
my mouth is like all mouths — which 


are not too ugly. My only great regret is about the 
color of my hair, which is such a reddish blonde that 
it is more red than yellow, with locks which are lighter 
or darker, like a peasant-woman’s striped skirt. If my 
aunt is to be believed, I shall never be tall, and she 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


I 


has a way of murmuring, when I am near enough to 
hear, “ Little woman,” which brings me down to the 
level of the ground. The truth is that 1 come up to 
her elbow, but, as 1 know no man in the vicinity who 
reaches above her shoulder, the proportion does not 
seem to me very bad. And being such, and thinking 
thus, I am waiting in my ice-covered tower, whose feet 
are in the snow, for my liberator and my hero ! 

March 2d. 

A thing of which I have often thought, but about 
which I have never dared to ask my aunt, is the nature 
of our relations to each other. Is she in my house, or 
am I in hers ? Has she received me in her castle, or 
have I sheltered her in my ruin ? And do .the two 
towers and four Avails which are still standing, with 
strength to bear their name of “ Erlange de Fond-de- 
Vieux,” belong to Mademoiselle d’Epine or to Made- 
moiselle d’Erlange? 

As far back as I can remember we were always as 
we are now : she as cold, as tall, as dry, always shut up 
in the largest room of the chateau, on the sunny side 
and protected from the wind ; I getting on as 1 could in 
the house or out of it, in the cold or rain, without ap- 
parent notice from her. With us are Benoite, who is 
cook, farmer, butler, and gardener all in one, besides 
being my only friend, and Frangoise at the mill-Avheel, 
going at the same rate — though perhaps a little 
faster. 

Later came my two years in the convent, those two 


12 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


happy years, when I was talked to, called by my name, 
when my bed was one of twelve little white beds all 
alike, under whose coverings there were such joyous 
whisperings, and during which I learned many things, 
if I neglected some that were taught in the class-rooms. 
My convent, where I formed eternal friendships, where 
I learned to dress my hair, to use a fan, where I knew 
for the first time what an ideal is, and how for a man to 
be a hero he must necessarily be dark, pale, slightly 
middle-aged, gloomy, and sarcastic ! Who will bring 
back those happy days ta me? 

The walls were high, but the rumors of Paris reached 
over them, and, on the days when visitors were allowed, 
we heard echoes of the world without which made our 
conversation all the week. Oh ! those mysterious con- 
fidences among the trees of the park, which protected 
us like the most impenetrable jungle, but where the 
noise of falling leaves frightened us and made us run for 
safety ; those games of hide-and-seek around the bases of 
the statues to hide from the nuns, whose censure was so 
dreaded but whose voices were so gentle ; and the foolish 
notes which circulated from desk to desk under the pre- 
tense of geographical information — where shall I ever 
find anything so delightful? The Mediterranean Sea 
signified one person, the Baltic another, and we made 
them say and do things which overturned all the laws 
of Nature. 

Besides the notes, there were presents — knots of blue 
or red ribbon pinned on white paper, which was orna- 
mented with devices and sentiments which were the ex- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


13 

pression of an affection or a tenderness that made our 
hearts beat. 

Then came the day when my aunt suddenly appeared, 
for the first time since she took me there, and brought 
me home without a word of warning. 

Without preface, she began: “Your education is 
finished, and, as you have not been able to establish 
yourself in these two years, you must return to Er- 
lange.” Return to Erlange ! I was confounded. It 
seemed to me that I was being put into a tomb and the 
cover shut down while I was still alive. “ But, aunt,” 
I stammered, “ do not think I have learned anything ; 
on the contrary, spelling, arithmetic, history — ” I 
hesitated. I could say no more. I would have been 
willing not to know how to read, so that she might 
leave me there to learn the b, a, ba, of my speller. But 
nothing embarrassed her. She interrupted me in her 
usual way : 

“ If you know nothing, my dear,” she said, dryly, 
“you have wasted your two years, and I could not 
conscientiously leave you here another hour ! Besides, 
it is your own fault, and you have added to your posi- 
tion of a young person without fortune the charm of 
ignorance, which will hardly facilitate your way in life. 
But, thank God, I shall not have it on my conscience, 
for I have given you the chance of bettering your 
position.” 

She rose quickly, but with a decision which put an 
end to the discussion, and which plunged me in such 
despair that I cried out almost without knowing it : 


14 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ And if I have a vocation for a religious life ? ” 

“ In that case,” she replied, turning quickly with an 
enigmatical smile, “I should leave you here.” She 


stopped a moment, then, mov- 



ing toward the door with- 
out looking at me : “I give 
you twenty -four hours for 
reflection,” she added, and 
disappeared, like a bad 
dream. 


I had gained twenty-four 
hours ! It seemed to me 
that I had peace forever. 
The coif and the veil of 


the nuns seemed to me 
almost beautiful when I thought 


of them as a means of snatching me from exile ! 

Although it was strictly forbidden, I stole to the 
dormitory at the first spare moment, and, with two 
white handkerchiefs and my black apron, I arranged on 
my head the coif in question. 

Undoubtedly 1 was prettier in my ordinary dress, 
but there was nothing repulsive in my appearance, and 
the white band above my eyebrows and eyes made 
them, I think, appear longer and blacker. That was the 
first point, certainly the most important, and my resolu- 
tion from that moment was irrevocably taken. During 
the remainder of the day I practiced the austerities 
which belong to my newly-chosen profession. Being 
sent on an errand to the infirmary, which was at the 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


15 


other end of the park, I managed without being seen to 
go and return barefooted. I experienced no harm ex- 
cept some insignificant bruises; and, more and more 
certain of my vocation, I remember that I passed part 
of the night kneeling at the foot of my bed, pressing 
against my breast a bunch of keys, a pen-knife (shut), 
and an ivory paper-knife, that I had hung around my 
neck as a penance, the points entering into my flesh in 
a disagreeable manner. 

Twice, when the sister on duty passed, I jumped 
into my bed, and the rattling of my keys attracted her, 
and made her bend over me for some time ; but she 
heard such a steady, tranquil breathing, and saw eyes 
so tightly closed, that she thought she was mistaken, 
and passed on. 

The next morning all was excitement in the con- 
vent. An archbishop, who had been expected some 
days later for the taking the veil by five novices, sud- 
denly arrived, and the preparations for the ceremony 
were hastened. 

How fortunate ! I said to myself, while struggling to 
brush out the curls of my hair, which resisted in spite 
of all the water I employed. Heaven itself put all 
these tests in my way, and this evening I shall be ready 
to answer my aunt with a full knowledge of all that is 
before me. I had no chance of speaking privately to 
the Mother Superior that morning, and my toilet ex- 
periment caused me to be summarily sent back to the 
dormitory. “ You are disguised as a drop of water — 
how charming ! ” said one of my companions, as we fell 


1 6 THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

into line, and at the same moment the voice of Sister 
Agnes was heard, but much less pleasantly : 

“ Mademoiselle d’Erlange,” she said imperiously, 
“ have you dipped your head in the fountain ? Go 
immediately and dry your hair and arrange it prop- 
erly.” 

In the dormitory I could judge of the effect of my 
efforts. My hair curled tighter than ever, and the 
water hung in drops from the ends of the curls, and 
wherever there was a ridge. The effect was certainly 
not ugly, but it was not nun-like, and I dried as well as I 
could the unseasonable ornament which shone like dia- 
monds. 

My exaltation went on increasing to the middle of 
the ceremony : the flowers, the lights, the five young 
girls dressed in white, whose long white-satin trains 
swept the ground, excited my fervor until I was impa- 
tient to be one of them. 

In the distance I saw the congregation, and among 
them a tall young man, an officer in uniform, whose 
eyes seemed to me to be red. 

Was he a lover come to look for the last time 
on her he had loved? A rumor of this kind had 
reached us, and it seemed to me the height of ro- 
mance. 

But when the five open coffins were brought, and the 
novices, dressed now as nuns and concealed by long 
black veils, were placed in them to hear the burial serv- 
ice, my resolution suddenly gave way. I took out my 
bunch of keys from my bosom, and fled without listen- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


17 

ing, and was scolded for the last time at the convent, to 
pack my boxes myself in all haste. 

At the hour fixed I was in the parlor, bag in hand, 
my eyes wet with tears from the' last good-byes,, and 
laden down with cards and pictures — tokens of affection 
— but so resolute that Erlange appeared to me in a halo 
of glory, and I walked toward the door as my aunt en- 
tered. 

“ Well,” she said, with a gesture of surprise, “ what 
does this mean ? ” 

“ I am ready to go,” I replied, without remarking a 
shade of vexation which I remembered later. 

I burst into tears anew in embracing the Superior, 
and with my eyes obscured by weeping I passed out of 
the door. “ Eastern,” said my aunt as we entered the 
carriage, and two hours after we were traveling rapidly 
by rail, in a silence worthy of the five new nuns who 
had unconsciously driven me from the convent. 

At the station where we got out, the rumbling old 
yellow coach which ran to the village waited for us ; 
my aunt pushed me toward it with a gesture, and, fol- 
lowing the example of her silence, I showed her by a 
sign that 1 preferred to sit outside. “ No, no,” she re- 
plied in a dry tone, “ you shall not leave me any more.” 
At the village Frangoise and the chaise were waiting 
for us, and the same evening, stunned by the brusque 
change, I found myself once more between the four 
walls of my room, from which I perceived to my great 
astonishment that all my furniture had been removed. 

In the darkness of the night, my candle seemed like 


IS THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

a funeral taper, my footsteps resounded as in a church, 
and, realizing how solitary I was, I did the only reason- 
able thing 1 could do, and sitting on the floor, my two 
arms around my valise, I wept abundant tears, though 
it had seemed to me in the morning I had no more to 
shed. When this was done, I got up to open my win- 
dow to a ray of moonlight which struck on the glass, 
and remarked for the first time how dark and deep is 
the valley which isolates us from the remainder of the 
country. “ O God ! ” I could not help saying aloud, 
“ who will come to deliver me ? ” And a sweet little 
voice, which I still hear from time to time, whispered 
in my ear, “ He ; be patient! ” And since then I look for 
him every day, I make excuses for him every morning, 
and I hope for him unceasingly. 

March 3d. 

Certainly writing has its good side, and I am fonder 
than I expected to be of John Nicolas’s parchments. 

When I am seated with them before me, I forget, 
and it seems to me that I am tell- 
ing my troubles to a friendly ear. 
I fancy that I have a deaf-mute 
before me, that writing-implements 
are necessary to our intercourse, 
and I scribble on ! When I am 
absent from him I think of all the 
things I will tell him, and, when 
I return to my room and begin to 
speak to him, I find that one thing leads to another — 
that if I tell him this I must tell him that, or he will 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


19 


never understand my life. Then I must go still further 
back, turn pages, water my bottle of ink, and the sacri- 
ficial goose must surrender more feathers if this weather 
lasts much longer ! 

I left off at my first despair and the words with 
which my aunt had received me in the parlor — the 
words that particularly struck me. “ Since you have 
not found means to establish yourself suitably in these 
two years,” she had said to me. 

Was it to look for a husband that she sent me to 
the convent, and did she fancy that the nuns in their 
care for our welfare invited young men of good fam- 
ily and of proper age to see us on Sundays and Thurs- 
days, who would talk with us and bring us back our 
balls and shuttle-cocks ? 

The ingenuousness would have been great, and I 
could scarcely imagine such a sentiment emanating from 
the brain of such a woman, but it was worth while to 
try to find out, and in spite of the length of time it had 
taken me to understand it, in spite of the very real fear 
I have had of my aunt ever since I was a baby, I de- 
cided about two months ago to question her on the 
subject. 

From our short interview, I came to a clearer knowl- 
edge of her character and also of her past life, of which 
she never speaks, having apparently no pleasant remem- 
brances of it. This fortunate glimpse has besides given 
me an inkling of the lot which she designs for me, and 
which she arranges in such a manner quite contrary 
to my own intentions. I do not trouble myself much 


20 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


about this, but let her make her little plans, feeling sure 
that I have quite strength of purpose enough to refuse 
to accept her projects, if it should be necessary. 

Aurora-Raymonde-Edmee d’Epine has never had the 
consciousness of having been anything but ugly at any 
period of her existence. It is in vain that in looking 
at her I try to fancy her without wrinkles, mustache, 
freckles, and all that age has given her — there are cer- 
tainly features which time with all its power can not 
change. 

Besides, Benoite is a witness, and certifies to her 
frightful ugliness from the cradle. As an infant in long 
clothes, she resembled no other baby. 
The worst is, the evil was not only ex- 
terior, but it covered a temper and 
disposition that accorded with it. Did 
the ugliness come from the bad tem- 
per, or the bad temper from the ugli- 
ness? Nobody could say exactly. It 
was like the question of her poor di- 
gestion and bad teeth. One asks one’s 
self in seeing her, “ Which has spoiled 
the other?” It is certain they are 
equally bad. 

Nevertheless, these are excuses, but the case is not 
always so — sometimes ugly people are amiable. The 
story of “ Beauty and the Beast ” proves it, and Benoite 
says that the contemporaries of my aunt were more 
often repulsed by the disagreeable words she ut- 
tered than by her ugly mouth. Relatives, friends, and 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


21 


strangers were treated alike, and I can believe that her 
name Epine gave rise to many jests. From all this, it is 
easy to understand that a young girl with so many de- 
fects had not an agreeable youth. Every one instinct- 
ively avoided her, and my mother had been married 
for years while my aunt was still waiting for the cour- 
ageous man who would draw her from her celibacy. 
She clung to this hope with wonderful tenacity — long 
after another would have resigned herself ; and the sense 
of an intolerable humiliation and anger still remains the 
principal sentiment of her heart. 

Time has passed, but her anger and hatred remain, 
and she cultivates her grievance with a care she gives to 
nothing else. It is her cat, her parrot, her dog, the 
favorite of her solitary life ; and I should see no harm in 
her occupation, unpraiseworthy as it is, if the beast she 
nourishes had not teeth and claws, and did not use them 
from time to time. 

The most curious part of it all is that her resentment 
is not directed, as would be natural, against the authors 
of the evil, but against happier women who have pleased 
the men who had no eyes for her, and even against those 
who in their turn may one day marry. Does she think 
that in all sin one must regard the cause more than the 
effect ? Does she consider the rogue who steals less 
wicked than the apple or peach which tempts him by 
its beauty ? Or, perhaps, is this indulgence the last sign 
of a weakness and partiality which have been, alas ! but 
poorly recompensed ? I do not know, for I have only 
suffered the effects of this odd system of compensation. 


22 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


This sentiment of my aunt is so powerful that it ex- 
tends to all classes and all ages. 

The music from a wedding in the village, if it reaches 
up here, drives her nearly wild ; and, on the rare occa- 
sions when she goes out, if chance places in her way a 
couple of lovers, or a bride leaning tenderly on her hus- 
band’s arm, she follows them with a terrible look which 
they will hardly forget. 

In fact, what she would like would be that her lot 
and her unhappiness should be the lot and the unhap- 
piness of all the world ; and she is at least logical in it, 
for she has tenderness and care for the ugly, the un- 
happy, the neglected — in fact, for all in whom her selfish- 
ness sees possible companions in misfortune. But let 
one of her protegees marry, and the charm is broken ! 

Such is my aunt, and such are the causes of the 
singular life I lead with her. 

What catastrophe threw me as a child into such un- 
loving hands I only half understand, but I believe that 
grief for the sudden death of my father caused the death 
of my mother shortly after. 

My Aunt Aurora (I say Aurora, for, by a bitter irony, 
it is the one of her names by which she is called) was 
the only member of her family remaining, and the care 
of the orphan naturally fell to her ; but, owing to the 
manner in which she fulfilled her duty, the charge was 
certainly not heavy upon her, and she simply ignored 
me until the moment when, I know not how, she woke 
to the fact that the traditional enemy, in my person, was 
in her home, and that, by a natural transformation, the 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


23 


child would one day become a woman. If this was not 
the sole reason which determined our sudden departure 
for Erlange, it was something of the same sort, for I was 
hardly ten years old when she suddenly transplanted me 
to this rustic neighborhood — where at first everything 
enchanted me. 

Then passed the uncertain stage of my childhood. 
Each change was followed by my aunt with an atten- 
tion which 1 should like to call friendly, but I fear it was 
rather an uneasy curiosity that moved her. What was 
to develop from the muddy complexion, dull eyes, and 
hands and feet which never stopped growing? There 
was still doubt. 

Unfortunately, I continued to develop, and the day 
that I finally shook off my shell, my aunt took me at 
once to the convent. 

My poor mother, looking forward into my future, 
had exacted a promise from her sister that two years at 
least of my life as a young girl should be spent in Paris, 
and this was the ingenious manner of executing a prom- 
ise to the dead without going against her own wishes. 
I am persuaded that nothing would have made her 
break her word, but she kept it in this way without the 
slightest scruple, and now it is considered that I have 
seen all that there is to be seen of Paris ! 

When the time was ended, she came to tear me from 
my worldliness, and brought back to Erlange the niece 
whom no one wanted to marry, and who, she thanks 
Heaven, will perhaps walk in her footsteps ! 

This being the case, one may judge whether my 


24 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


proposition to stay in the convent suited her. A nun — 
it was the best solution, one which would not in any 
way hurt the feeling's of her susceptible self-love. The 
veil is not a husband ! and young girl and nun come 
next each other when one tells one’s fortune with a 
daisy ; besides, any young girl can take the veil. The 
convent is less exacting than a man, and does not de- 
mand beauty of face in the person who is buried there ; 
and I certainly caused more emotion in the breast of 
my aunt during those twenty-four hours than I had suc- 
ceeded in doing before since my birth. 

But in the interval my dream of a vocation had van- 
ished, and she had no choice but to keep my eighteen 
years beside her. A neighborhood which she liked so 
little that I can not help thinking that she saw in her 
mind’s eye the coxcombs of her youth, and thought of 
the jokes these wits would have made on seeing us to- 
gether — the bud on the prickly branch, alas ! long past 
its prime. 

If these are not exactly the words she used in speak- 
ing to me, for few people expose their own weaknesses 
so completely, the sense is scrupulously preserved ; and 
I am certain, from my own remembrances, those of 
Benoite, and what my aunt said herself, that I have 
sketched her exact character in the past, in the present, 
and even, alas ! in the future. 

Since that time, life here has resumed its course, or 
rather its stagnation, and my aunt considers it her duty 
to shower words regularly on me, which ring like hand- 
fuls of earth on a coffin, in order to convince me that 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


25 

Colette is dead, and needs nothing more in this world 
than a De Profundis . 

And I let her go on. But Vive Dieu ! as the most 
charming of our kings used to say. Let her beware, 
for I am not dead yet, and I mean to prove it to her 
some day. 

March 4th . 

My good John Nicolas, it snows still, and still 
harder, and the thermometer has gone lower down ! 
I wonder if it says truly, or whether, in taking it in 
from the window this morning after breakfast, I acci- 
dentally touched the shoulder of my aunt with it ? I 
do not know, but I am thinking of burning my chairs 
so as to make a bigger fire in my fire-place ! 

To complete my misfortunes, my remembrances of 
past months, which I have written during the past 
three days, must have escaped from my room like a 
flight of bats or rooks, for the increased bad humor of 
my aunt can not be explained otherwise, and her pre- 
dictions of the future have never taken a less amiable 
form. 

Solitude and poverty, for it seems that I am poor ; 
walls of stone and walls of forgetfulness — she sums up 
all the obstacles which separate me from the rest of my 
race with a joy which she can not conceal; and when 
she exposes in her paroxysms of gayety her long teeth, 
with decayed spots which make them look like domi- 
noes, I shudder and think of an ogress. 

Everything is not shadow, however, in her predic- 
tions : she finds charming words to trace the picture of 


26 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


our two lives lasting- indefinitely thus and finishing al- 
most together ; and at this point, so as not to burst into 
tears, I have to look at the windows, to assure myself 
that there are no bars such as they use to keep the little 
birds from escaping when they have neither strength 
nor courage, and would die for want of food on the 
roads. 

The bitter waters have destroyed her illusions ; and, 
whether I will or no, she wants me to drink in my turn ! 
If fate will not force me to it, she will herself stir the 
cup of Quassia amara, where all becomes bitter. Un- 
doubtedly, the planets which have traced my horoscope 
seem to her too indulgent, for she hopes to efface all 
the bright lines in it, so as to bring it down to the level 
of her own. 

The men of ’93 asked nothing more, after all. What 
they wanted was that every one should be as miserable 
as they were, and, to make sure that no one should dine 
when they were hungry, they seized the roast. But 
to think that a Mademoiselle d’Epine could wear the 
Phrygian cap is a difference ! 

While waiting for events, I decide to refurnish. An 
accident disclosed to me a fact which I had suspected — 
that my softest arm-chairs and least dilapidated cabinets 
ornament my aunt’s room. In spite of her efforts, the 
door stood ajar, and one of those blasts of wind which 
scatter the branches of our trees like straw from the 
thrasher, threw it wide open as I passed. 

It was a little palace. 

My aunt must have consecrated the two years of my 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


27 


absence to making her nest, so soft and beautiful it 
seemed, only she did it with material that was not her 
own, like a thieving bird. I have ceased to look for 
the tapestry of the dining-room, and the few cushions 
of the salon — I know where they are ! 

Under such circumstances, delicacy seemed to me 
out of place ; so I began to bring into my room all that 
my arms, aided by those of Benoite, could move — four 
arms with the force of six ! And my walls were fur- 
nished. 

On the other hand, the rooms between are left bare, 
and from the right wing to the left wing there is a huge 
desert in which we are guided on our way by our 
camp-fires at the two extremities. The dining-room is 
the only place we have in common, where I have re- 
spected the silver, the porcelain, 
and the chairs ! Seats, besides, are 
not wanting — I have a great many, 
if not much variety. 

My three sofas, for example, are 
all alike. They are of carved oak 
gnawed by the mice, which have 
rather interfered with the details of 
the sculpture ; and have coverings 
of green tapestry, on which beau- 
tiful ladies and helmeted knights 
converse in a garden whose walks lead steeply up to 
nothing. 

The pointed head-dresses of the ladies often touch 
the tops of the trees, and all the faces are in profile— 



28 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


the full face being doubtless too difficult to accomplish 
in tapestry ; but the effect is not less gay. I have ar- 
ranged each sofa in a panel of the wall, and my room 
is so long that by the time I have reached the second I 
have forgotten how the first looked. From the first, it 
would be possible to see the sun rise ; the second is op- 
posite the west ; and from the third I can see the moon, 
if there still is a moon ; but to-day from all three I have 
seen only falling snow, and I should have been glad of 
a fourth on which I could go and cry. 

One can hardly count my tables. My aunt does not 
care for tables, so I had many to choose from. There 
are round ones, square ones, all shapes and colors, and 
“ One,” who has, I am afraid, some of my vagabond 
tastes, tries lying under each in turn. From underneath 
the smallest he can hardly get out, and in getting up he 
finds himself caught, and, making a bound, flies from 
the room, howling dismally and sending the little draw- 
ers flying. But he will soon come back and furnish me 
with the carpet of which my feet had never greater 
need ; if not, would he deserve the name I have given 
him, and which in its single syllable signifies so much? 

Formerly, when he was young, 1 called him Pataud, 
an unpretending name, which I chose because of his 
heavy gait and big head ; but I know the world better 
now, and when I came back here, and had passed my 
friends in review who still remembered me, and proved 
it — only one remained, and that was he ! Hence his 
name. 

To go back to my furniture, I completed it with six 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


2 9 


prie-Dieu which I found all together. They have 
twisted columns and red-velvet cushions with gold tas- 
sels, on which the traces of knees remain. I lost myself 
in reflections over these two hollows, imagining the his- 
tory and thoughts of those who made them, but I only 
find a frightful smell of dust, and moths fly out of them 
with a frightened air, heavy still with their long repast. 

One of these prie-Dieu I take and put aside for its 
original use, but the others must take the place of all 
the furniture which I need — low chairs, cozy-chairs, 
arm-chairs. They, differing only by the names I give 
them, help my illusions, and I could, if necessary, seat 
twelve persons at once — if they were here. 

My poor Benoite is in despair trying to arouse me. 
When she sees me completely overcome with melan- 
choly, she employs her last resource ; and she insinu- 
ates gently, edging toward the door in case of need, 
“ Do you want to come and make cakes, Colette dear ? ” 
But I soon get tired of spoiling the dough and soiling 
my fingers with the butter, and I seat myself on the 
hearth while she does the work. 

Another time she lets me try her knitting — an inter- 
minable stocking, the stitches of which I can count at a 
distance ; but I do not like knitting any better than 
cooking, and the good old soul is reduced to telling me 
old nursery stories to make me laugh : “ Once upon a 
time there was a king and a queen.” But, for the love 
of Heaven, where are they now, this king and queen, 
and, since they had no children, why did they not adopt 
me ? 


30 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


March 5th. 

This morning there was an excitement, and I laugh 
again all by myself when I think of it. The provision of 
ham and other salt meat was exhausted, and my aunt, 
who is very fond of them, sent an order to the village 
that some should be sent, so that about nine o’clock a 
wagon with a linen cover, with the snow above the 
wheels and all the bells jingling, entered the court. It 
was Bidouillet arriving with his provisions. 

A new face, a new voice, some movement in the 
court ; it seemed to me that a curtain from a new scene 
had been raised, and I rushed excitedly down-stairs. 

“ Ah ! Monsieur Bidouillet, it is you, and you have 
brought some sausages ? ” 

“ Certainly, mademoiselle.” 

And the little old man turned toward me confused 
and stupefied, with his mouth open and his eyes full of 
astonishment, looking out from under his fur cap with 
his merchandise in his arms, while his son, who had been 
trying to rub the horse’s legs dry with a wisp of straw, 
stopped like a mechanical toy that has broken its spring. 

Evidently they were both struck with my singular- 
ity. The warmth of my reception greatly astonished 
them, and I am sure that at the present moment they 
credit me with a passion for ham and sausages which I 
have never possessed ; but, after one has waited three 
months for some one to talk to, one does not let him slip 
so easily, and, while Bidouillet, who is no great talker, 
followed Benolte, I seized on the boy whom I had taken 
in to warm himself. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


31 


“ What do they do in the village ? How do you pass 
your time ? And do they think that the snow will last 
much longer ? ” 

But the more I asked the more mute he became, his 
mouth stretched in a perpetual grin, and he was so 
heartily amused at my expense that his gayety became 
contagious, and we both laughed like two simpletons. 

After that he became confidential. He answered my 
questions, and now I know that in the village during the 
day the people prepare seeds, and put their plows and 
agricultural implements in order ; and in the evening 
they go to one another’s houses, where there are heaps 
of nuts to be cracked and apples to be pared and cored. 
When the work is finished, they roast chestnuts in the 
ashes and drink some white wine, and go home to bed 
contentedly. 

It seems to me that I smell the feast from here, and I 
will open my window this evening to try to hear the 
merriment from afar — like the poor wretch who ate his 
crust with a better relish from the odor of the roast 
which he envied. 

As for the snow, it may continue or it may stop, for 
it is certain that with the first ray of the sun it would 
end. I think I might have found that out for myself, 
and I had supposed that among the peasants there were 
knowing ones who could foretell the weather. 

“ And when you are alone in the evenings, my boy, 
what do you do ? ” I asked at length. 

“ We say our prayers.” 

“ And when you have finished? ” 

3 


32 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ When I have finished, ah, my faith, Mamselle Co- 
lette, I am already asleep.” 

Then we laughed again, and then we began to talk 
of the flocks. 

“Have the Bidouillets many? What are they? 
And who takes care of them ? ” 

He described the sheep one by one like a careful 
shepherd — as he is ; and when he added that the work 
would be doubled in summer, there were so many 
lambs — 

“Will you not need a shepherdess?” I asked him. 
“ If so, I know one who would take the place, and who 
would not be too exacting about pay.” 

Immediately he assumed the cunning look of the 
peasant who scents a good bargain, and with an indif- 
ferent tone : 

“ Perhaps,” he said. “ Does she belong here, Mam- 
selle Colette ? ” 

“ Certainly she does,” I answered, “ for it is I.” 

For this time it was our last word ! Astonishment 
seized him again, and I could not draw even a mo- 
tion from him until his father called him from down- 
stairs : 

“ Hello boy, are you there ? ” 

I leave you to guess his answer, and what he must 
have related on their homeward way. 

“ Remember me when you need some one,” I called 
to him as the wagon passed the door. “ I was in earnest 
you know,” and I came running back delighted with my 
morning. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


33 

Just now I met Benoite in the hall, and, in spite of 
the pile of plates she carried, I 
threw my arms about her, calling 
out : 

“ Rejoice, Benoite, we will crack 
nuts all this evening.” 

“ Nuts,” she replied — “ what for? 

Do you want to eat them ?” 

“ No, no, my poor old dear; to 
amuse ourselves ! It seems it is a very amusing thing 
to do.” 

She went off shaking her head, but she has prom- 
ised to bring some down from the garret and to find 
two hammers, and we will crack nuts by the fire. 

March 6th. 

For a week our two cows have been sick. The thing 
does not seem funny nor even interesting, but it has 
been the means of making me pass the best day I have 
had in a long time. 

The first day they were ill we drank tea, the second 
coffee, and Benoite spoke of a soup for the third morn- 
ing; but Mademoiselle d’Epine does not like priva- 
tions, and she sent word to a milk-woman in the vil- 
lage who since then has brought the necessary amount 
of milk on her donkey every morning. 

This morning, as she arrived late, I was up when 
she came, and I was looking at her measure her milk 
when my aunt rang violently. It is rare that the huge 
bell which rings from her room to the kitchen is heard 



34 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


out of the regular hours, but when it happens, it is a 
sign of something unusual ; and Benoite, who suspected 
the reason, took as a precaution her bottle of liniment, 
guessing the return of a rheumatic pain in the left shoul- 
der, which requires, as soon as it comes, repeated and 
vigorous rubbing. 

Meanwhile the old woman had emptied her can, all 
our pitchers were filled, and she was ready to go. 

“ Did you bring too much ? ” said I, seeing in the 
other pack a second can quite full. 

“ Excuse me, Mamselle Colette, there is just what is 
necessary.” 

“ For us ? ” 

“ Not for you ; for other people whose cows are dry 
too.” 

“ What ! You are going higher up ? ” 

“ Yes, mamselle, up to the Nid-du-Fol.” 

She put on her sabots while she was speaking, shiv- 
ered a little as she thought of the cold outside, took up 
her measure and was almost gone, when suddenly, irre- 
sistibly, the idea seized me to take her place on the don- 
key, to go and distribute the milk myself in her name, 
and so to take a delightful ride in the falling snow. 
Only to think of it made me wild with joy ; all the ac- 
cumulated impatience of these days when I had been 
shut up rushed over me, and I imagined the donkey 
trotting in the soft snow, the wind beating on my face, 
and the astonishment of the people up there at the 
change of persons. 

The good woman, to whom I had briefly explained 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


35 


my plan, cried, protested, and called Benoite in vain. I 
paid no attention to her, and got ready at once. Be- 
sides, our walls are so thick, I was sure my nurse would 
not hear, and I was certain that, even if she wanted to 
say no, I could make her say yes. 

At the same time, I completely won over the old 
woman by installing her near the fire, and showing her 
her red nose, blue lips, and swollen hands, and persuad- 
ing her that an hour’s rest and heat were just what she 
wanted to restore her. I assured her that I would take 
good care of her milk and of her donkey, and that I 
knew the road perfectly, and where all her customers 
lived ; and, before she could offer any more objections, 
I had her cloak over my shoulders, her hood over my 
head, and her stick in my hand — which you may be 
sure I used effectually. 

For the first quarter of an hour it was delightful: 
the donkey trotted gently along, the falling snow 
touched my cheeks as lightly as down, and I sang at 
the top of my voice with the gayety of a professional 
muleteer. But, little by little, the road became steeper, 
and the stones concealed under the snow made us stum- 
ble, and on turning a corner a sudden gust of wind 
sent my cloak to the right, the hood to the left, and 
forced me to dismount to arrange my apparel. The 
wretched donkey seized the occasion to continue his 
route, while I pursued him, uttering all the exclama- 
tions I know : 

“ Oh ! Whoa ! Stop ! ” 

When caught, it was difficult to mount him. The 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


36 

pack turned, there was nothing solid to catch hold of, 
and I placed my feet on a dozen little elevations before 
finding one which was not all snow into which I would 
sink up to my knees ; and at last when, seated on this 
tottering throne, I utter a cry of triumph, the donkey 
is seized with a fit of obstinacy. His four feet seem 
rooted to the ground, and in vain I urge him with my 
voice, or the switch, or my heel — he is like a tower, ex- 
cept for the occasional jumps which he executes, and 
which make the milk spout from the can so that I am 
sprinkled with a mixture of milk and snow up to my 
ears. Then I try all known exclamations to make him 
move : 

“ Get up ! Go on ! P-r-r-r — ” up to the moment 
when, our two minds being agreed, he suddenly starts. 

At Nid-du-Fol the wind is a cyclone, and the snow 
falls in a solid mass, and, when we arrive at the first 
house, my nose and lips are like those of the old 
woman. 

Everybody cries out, tries to warm me, but, as the 
air is getting colder, and they say there will be a tem- 
pest before long, I start back almost immediately. The 
hill is hard to go down, the snow, which is freezing, is 
hard to get over, and sliding and falling we arrive as 
best we may half-way down, when the final catastrophe 
takes place. 

My donkey perceives with great intelligence that 
safety, which is impossible for the two of us, is still pos- 
sible for him ; he lets slip his four feet at once, rolls 
over, and deposits me in a deep hollow where the bed 



My donkey perceives with great intelligence 










' 























































































































































THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


37 


of snow receives me like a mattress, but where 1 am 
more entangled than in a nest of feathers, while he starts 
off at a gallop that shakes the ground. 

It was certainly funny, and my first impression was 
one of amusement, for 1 thought I could get up as soon 
as I liked — but probably the shock had slightly stunned 
me, for in spite of all my efforts I found it impossible, 
and I felt myself so helpless that I compared myself, I 
remember, to a May-bug turned on its back with its feet 
in the air. 

All my limbs were powerless, and gradually it 
seemed to me as if my intelligence and will melted and 
ran out of me like the snow that dissolved on my fin- 
gers, and that my head was gradually getting empty of 
all 1 was accustomed to find in it. 

Otherwise the position was not disagreeable. The 
depth of the hole preserved me from the wind, and my 
bed, in spite of its coldness, was soft, so soft that I sank 
farther and farther in, and, very gently, other flakes fall- 
ing, covered me like a corpse that they cover softly 
over. 

As time passed, I felt the cold less ; I liked the sleep 
that was stealing over me, and, in spite of the distinct 
impression I had that I should never be taken out, I did 
not feel afraid, and I could willingly have smiled. 

Only my lips refused to move, and I experienced 
what statues must experience, if statues ever think — a 
desire to move an arm which is in marble, and can not 
move, words which can not pass a throat that has not 
been animated, and ideas which can not work in a brain 


38 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


that is petrified and where nothing moves. Then little 
by little — a blank ! and it seemed to me that I was no 
longer a girl in flesh and blood, but a mass of lead, so 
heavy I seemed. 

I do not know how long this suspension of life lasted. 
Was it an hour, a day? — it matters little. I think I 
should have suffered no more if it had been prolonged, 
and, when I regained my consciousness, I was very near 
being angry because so comfortable a rest had been in- 
terrupted. 

On one side of my bed was great grief — it was my 
poor Benoite ; on the other, I feel a moist nose which 
forces its way under the sheet, and thus I come back to 
life between my two best friends. On one of my sofas, 
disregarding the dignity of my beautiful ladies, the 
milk-woman is sobbing, and one of my first observations 
is that her hands are as red as ever. Why has she not 
warmed them in all this time ? 

In the meanwhile I am still a little doubtful. Is my 
bed of snow or wool? But on stretching out my hands 
I touch on each side bottles of hot water, and a series 
of them down to my feet. It is a cremation. It is 
useless to speak of the reaction one experiences after 
great cold ; I should certainly not have felt this heat in 
my ditch. I believe decidedly that I am at home. 

Besides, the only familiar face wanting to complete 
the picture comes out of the shadow, and I hear the 
voice of my aunt : 

“ She is crazy, raving mad, and I repeat to you that 
I can do nothing with her ! But, really, she might have 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


39 

reflected that we are not organized for taking care of 
frozen people here.” 

So, I am frozen. This idea impresses me, and, while 
the door is closed by the amiable hand I know so well, 
all the stories that I have heard flash upon my mind, 
and I have visions that make me shudder, of toes com- 
ing off with the boots, and hands falling off with the 
gloves. Good Heaven! where have mine been left? 
It seems to me that I am in spun glass, and, seized with 
fright in thinking of my fragility, I dare not move, until 
a cry of joy from my old nurse, on hearing me breathe, 
makes me laugh in spite of myself. 

My lips are solid. I risk putting out my arms 
toward her, and I find with pleasure all my fingers at- 
tached to my hands. It is a delightful moment. 

Then comes my story — a terrible story, like that of 
rescues on the Mont St. Bernard, where the dog in the 
person of “ One ” plays his part ; and I lparn that, next 
to the dog, I owe my life to the rapid galloping of the 
donkey on his return journey. 

A little hesitation, a little less force, the print of his 
hoofs being three quarters filled up, which they fol- 
lowed in coming to look for me, and I should have 
stayed in my hole until next spring ! 

After the tears and pity, the scolding came as a mat- 
ter of course, and Benoite vowed that she would never 
forgive me. 

Her tone is so serious this time that I think I shall 
have to wait until I kiss her for good-night, to make my 
peace and to see her tenderness come back. 


40 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 



Meanwhile she fills me with hot tea, which she 
brings without looking at me, and 
offers turning her head away ; and 
in the intervals “ One ” 
waits on me all alone. It 
is he who has given me 
my book, pen, even my 
bottle of ink, and that 
without even soiling the 
points of his teeth ; it is half to 
him, my mute listener, that I tell all this. 


March yth . 

If it were not for the zealous watch Benoite keeps 
on me I would go back to my hole, for really anything 
is preferable to the life I lead here. 

No ill effects have remained of my adventure. I 
have not even sneezed, and all I have gained is that I 
have no longer the right to pass the threshold without 
my dog’s holding me by the dress, and howling until 
Benoite arrives and makes me come in. 

Just now I took up the book with the story of the 
princesses who lived long ago, and I found that I knew 
it by heart, for, without turning the first page, I contin- 
ued the phrase I was reading, and I am afraid I must 
wait for weeks to forget it sufficiently. The calendar 
which I made for myself, where I effaced a day each 
night, went too slowly for me. I have made another for 
all the hours of the day, and, although the occupation is 
twelve times more frequent, I catch myself moving the 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


41 

hands of the clock so as to have the pleasure soon of 
passing my pen through the hour that I kill. 

Certainly, this can not go on. 

The roads will not always be blocked, and I will then 
find some way to occupy my time, even if I have to 
travel about the country with a peddlers pack on my 
back ! 

I have thought about doing it ; I have even thought 
what I could take. But there is so little of anything 
here. After much searching I have found ten old 
silk dresses in the closets, and in a box some ends of 
old lace — but what would our peasants do with such 
things ? 

A life I have dreamed of is that of a servant at the 
village inn! To see people every day, to be always 
active, to be always able to talk ; to laugh and to work 
from morning to night — that is a life worth living ! But 
would they take me at the inn ? That is what I do not 
know. 

In the meanwhile sadness makes me weak. 

I make concessions, compromises. I find myself 
sacrificing something in the color of my ideal, which up 
to the present I have been so decided about. I have 
even thought of blonde hair with blue eyes, and a good- 
natured look, a small beard, a small person — anything, 
in fact, if he will take me from here. 

Solitude enervates, and I begin to understand that 
one can be tortured so as to deny one’s firmest convic- 
tions. 

My torture at first appeared light to me, but finally 


42 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


— finally, I think it would make me pass through the 
circle of a ring if I thought I could escape from it in 
that way. 

March 8th. 

My friend the milk- woman has just been here to ask 
for me, and came up to my room to assure herself that 
I had escaped in good health. 

She hardly believed her eyes, and confessed that for 
an hour she had thought I was dead. 

How strange things are ! I have not even a scratch, 
but the donkey, who thought he was doing so well for 
himself, has to be kept in the stable in consequence of a 
terrible cold, straw all about him, and warm drink served 
in his drinking-trough. 

The good woman does not worry about him. He is 
subject, it appears, to such small ailings, and, with his 
feet warmly wrapped up, he gets quickly over them. 

So all is for the best, and I made my visitor sit down, 
delighted to have a human being to talk to, and resolved 
to make her stay as long as I could. 

Naturally, my adventure came up, and I laughed in 
listening to her exclamations of fright and pity. 

“ It is certain,” she said, with a thoughtful air, “ that 
for a young person the life here is not gay, and one can 
understand that sometimes you try to get out of it.” 

She thought about it for some time, then very simply 
she inquired if I did not think that the best thing for me 
would be to marry and go away, and whether my aunt 
was not trying to do something about it. 

I answered no, and this time very seriously ; and as 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


43 


she went out of the door I heard her mutter to herself, 
“ The Mother Lancien could, perhaps, give some good 
advice.” I did not think of questioning her then, but I 
am in a hurry for to-morrow to come, so that I can find 
out who this Mother Lancien is who gives good advice, 
and who, according to my milk-woman, may help me. 


March gth. 

It seems to me that one of the tiles of my roof has 
been taken off, and that for the first time I see blue sky, 
and that I can already reach out my arm — the revela- 
tions of my old woman have given me such hope. 

To-morrow I will have the advice of Mother Lancien, 
if I know myself ; and, if the oracle of this sibyl does 
not help me, it must be that my case is desperate, and 
there is no more hope for me. I will then struggle no 
longer, but clasp my hands and say, Amen ! 

Why did I not hear of such a woman before ? I can 
only explain it to myself by seeing how little the bats 
and owls among our ruins know of what is going on in 
the neighboring dove-cote. 

However, the veneration in which she is held is so 
great, it might have reached us ; one should hear my 
milk-woman talk of her. When she spoke about her just 
now, one thought of a Levite unveiling the altar before 
an attentive crowd ; and, on listening to her, I caught 
myself getting up to bow each time that her name was 
spoken, as we used to bow during vespers at the Gloria 
Patri , our heads all bending at the same moment, like 
wheat when the wind passes over it. It was not that I 


44 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


felt like laughing. I shall always venerate the magic 
wand, whether it be of hazel or cedar, and I already re- 
spect the cap of my counselor. 

Death, marriage, birth. This woman is interested in 
whatever takes place in the village. Is it she who 
blesses the young couples, and distributes to each child 
its lot in life ? I am tempted to believe it is, and, if I 
were born at Erlange, I would go and complain to her 
of what I have received. 

She is something of a doctor, taking away the prac- 
tice of the one from the city ; she mends and cures like 
a fairy. Sprains, cuts, malignant fevers, she cures all ; 
and, as her plasters smell of tallow, and her medicines of 
mint and thyme, and her prescriptions are given in patois 
— all things the rustics know — every one has confidence 
and takes them. 

Besides, she is not exclusive ; she receives all patients, 
and more than one is brought to her from the hen-house 
or the stable. 

She knows the mixture to give so that a hen shall lay 
at the proper time, the feed that fattens and that which 
is hurtful, and there is no doubt that, if she had been 
employed soon enough, our cows would never have 
known the humiliation of being dry. 

To complete an enumeration of her qualities, and 
what touches me more directly, her skill does not stop 
with material concerns ; there is no affair, however 
troublesome it seems, that she can not arrange. Like 
handsome Percinet in the fairy-tale, who could sort three 
barrels of humming-birds’ feathers with three waves of 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


45 


his wand, she finds remedies for troubles with equal 
facility ; and the most unbelieving, those who go to her 
as a last resource, come away satisfied. 

So that the procession never ceases — animals that are 
dragged by the halter, sick people that are led by the 
arm, or patients who come to consult her at twilight. 

A holy woman, a good woman she is, if there ever 
was one, whose magic is no black-art, and who has no 
witch’s stew, and who has even time to go and burn can- 
dles for the needs of her clients ! 

I will certainly see her to-morrow, even if Benoite 
sleeps before my door to hinder my going out. Besides, 
my poor old nurse will only hear about it afterward, I 
hope ; I arrange my plans in the dark, and I prepare my 
pilgrim’s staff and cape most secretly — to such an extent 
that I do not even let “ One ” into the secret. I suspect 
his too great zeal, and there are cases where a dog may 
say too much, in spite of his enforced reserve. 

Behind the door where I have shut him up he 
whines piteously, and scratches so violently that I think 
he hopes to make a hole through which he can see. 
But I am watching, and, the better to keep my secret, 
I shall not speak of it any more, even to myself, until 
to-morrow. 

March ioth. 

There is certainly some secret affinity between the 
snow and me, and it was very near keeping me in cus- 
tody again this morning. 

But I had something better this time to do than to 
go to sleep in the wind. The man who carries a treas- 
4 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


46 

ure, and he who goes empty-handed, walk very differ- 
ently. I struggled, and here I am ! 

I got out very easily. With Benoite engaged in a 
serious cleaning, and “ One ” shut up in a closet, I was 
safe. 

With my dress well taken up, my mountain-shoes, 
and a cloak fit for a grandmother on my shoulders, I 

was ready to go to Siberia, 
and never was there a gayer 
walk. 

Besides, I had not taken 
five hundred steps when a 
black ball rolled over and 
over on the road — and my 
poor dog had joined me. 

Had he knocked over the 
wardrobe, broken down the 
door, or torn off the lock ? 1 

do not know, but from the 
moment that I was certain 
that he had not spread the 
news of my escape, and that no one was following 
me, I confess that 1 was delighted to have him with 
me along the road, and to be able to discuss with him 
all we were going to do and say. 

The house of the Mother Lancien is a little way 
from the village, in a small grove of pine-trees, whose 
branches spread out so as almost to form a second roof. 
The snow is well trodden down on the path that leads 
to it, and I am sure that in summer the grass is well 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


47 


worn. For some reason, I headed the procession this 
morning, and my solitude promised me a long confer- 
ence. 

While I knock gently at the door, I look swiftly in 
at the window. The prophetess is there, sitting by the 
hearth. Before her are five or six smoking saucepans, 
and farther back a big pot whose cover the good woman 
lifts delicately to smell the odor. Ha ! that smells of 
fresh meat, it seems to me ! A little shiver runs down 
my back, and, without knocking again, I step back a lit- 
tle. But, bah ! sorceresses know everything ! Through 
the wall this one sees me ; she gets up, opens the door, 
looks at me a moment crouching against the wall and 
abashed as a little hungry chimney-sweep, and, without 
more astonishment than if I had come to her for the 
twentieth time, says — 

“ Mamselle Colette ? Come in and warm yourself a 
little ; the wind is bitter this morning ! ” 

Then she settles me in a large straw-seated arm- 
chair, and, while “ One ” stretches himself at my feet, 
extending his paws luxuriously on the warm hearth, 
she sits down again in her place opposite me. 

At the first moment, I must say I was much embar- 
rassed. I had thrown my cloak on the back of my 
chair, and the melting snow was dripping down my 
back, but I did not think of retreating. 

She, during this time, arranged the fire, brushed 
up the ashes, without speaking ; then at the moment 
when, being no longer able to control myself, I was 
going to say some stupid thing — 


48 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“Do you like them hot?” she asked, quietly, un- 
covering the big pot again, and taking out some pota- 
toes just cooked. 

Where the skin was cracked, the mealy part — al- 
most silvery, it was so white — was bursting out in 
little rolls, and the rose-colored steam nearly filled the 
room. 

By this time my embarrassment was gone, and lit- 
tle by little, and interrupting myself to blow on my 
fingers or to change my potato from hand to hand, I 
told her my troubles, and asked her advice. 

Mother Lancien listened quietly to the end without 
even a gesture, her arms crossed over her head, and 
with an expression which became more and more 
smiling. 

“ My child,” she said, when I had finished, “ your 
case is not very serious, and I know of hardly any that 
are at twenty ; but I am afraid the good people about 
here have deceived you as to what I can do, and that 
you credit me with a power that does not belong to 
me. My remedies are very simple, and you could find 
just as good ones, perhaps better, if you looked for 
them. 

“ In cold weather like this, for example, I force 
people with fevers and coughs to stay in bed — all who 
have no reason for being out ; and at the same time I 
send out all the men with sanguine temperaments, 
those who like to sit by the fire and smoke their pipes. 
In both these cases the remedy is good, and Mother 
Lancien has the reputation of working a miracle. It is 





“My child,” she said, “your case is not very serious 











































































































































































































































































































































THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


49 

the same with all the rest. Between ourselves we can 
say — can’t we — that it is not a difficult matter. 

“ Now you are offended, and you think that, if 
you had known this before, you would not have taken 
this long walk to find an old woman who can do so 
little ! Perhaps, however, we shall find what you need. 

“ If the times of fairies and enchanters are passed, 
there are still good geniuses ready to help us in our 
troubles, and it is to them that I advise you to go. God 
forbid that I should speak lightly of them, or compare 
them to those that were invented long ago ! But in 
this case, where no one on earth can help you, why 
have you, my young lady, forgotten the saints in Para- 
dise ? ” 

“ The saints in Paradise ! ” I confess this stupefied 
me, and that if Mother Lancien had drawn from her 
bread-box a young and handsome cavalier with a point- 
ed mustache and plumed hat in hand, it would hardly 
have astonished me more. However, as she was await- 
ing my answer, I replied, “ I did not think of them.” 

“ Very well,” she said, “ it is just as I supposed.” 

And she began to explain to me so clearly how one 
obtains in praying all one desires — how one must go 
to work ; of whom to ask such a favor, and of whom 
another — that it really seemed as if she had lived fa- 
miliarly with the great saints of whom she spoke, and 
that she understood all their feelings. 

“ When you were a child,” she said, “ whom did 
you ask to give you the fruit that grew out of your 
reach on the trees ? Was it not taller people than 


50 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


you ? But you are grown up, and large enough to help 
yourself to what you want on the earth ; but for that 
which is still out of your reach, do as you used to 
do, ask some one higher still, for there will always be 
things which you can not attain.” 

She spoke so simply but so grandly, if one may use 
the word, that, without prejudice to our cure, I may say 
it was better than any of his sermons ; and her faith 
was so real and so contagious, that my heart beat in 
listening to her, and it seemed to me that up in the sky, 
through the little window-panes, I saw all the inhab- 
itants of Paradise, with their hands half open, smiling 
to me from afar, and ready, as soon as I asked them, to 
send me all the things at their disposal. 

Why I had never thought of them I can not imag- 
ine ; and when I think of the place which my neuvaine * 
holds at present in my life and in my heart, I am tempt- 
ed to weep for my lost time. 

But it is not worth the while now. Nine days are 
so soon over, and they seem so short when one knows 
that happiness is at the end of them ! 

The Mother Lancien told me that it is to Saint Jo- 
seph that I ought to address myself, as it is not within 
the memory of man that he has rejected such a prayer 
as mine. Only, the prayers must be frequent and the 
faith unwavering. 

Unwavering faith I certainly have, as if the saint 
himself had pledged his word, and for an empire I 
would not prolong my prayers half an hour beyond the 

* Nine days’ prayer. 


























































































































































































"T- 



The altar I have made for my saint is superb 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


51 


nine days. Moses paid too dearly for the thoughtless- 
ness of the second stroke of his rod on Horeb. I will 
keep to one. Only, I will strike conscientiously, and I 
will find such convincing words that perhaps the waters 
will gush out before the end of the nine days. 

Oh, this Mother Lancien ! I worship her. And, if 
she likes, I will find a place for her in the carriage that 
takes me away. 

March nth . 

The altar I have made for my saint is superb ; a 
whole corner of my room is transformed by it. 

What gave me the most trouble was to find a statue 
of him, and in despair I was going to take one of Saint 
John the Baptist in his stead, and beg him to allow him- 
self to be prayed to as Saint Joseph, when I discovered 
what I needed in a corner of the chapel. 

The statue is small, in silver, and the lovely little 
branch of lilies that he holds in his hand has all the 
grace of natural flowers. 

By putting several things under it, I succeeded in 
making it higher than the candelabras, and at a distance, 
dimly seen high up, it appears still smaller, half lost in 
the sky. 

In front I have put branches of holly with red ber- 
ries gathered from above the snow in the park, and all 
my prie-dieu, which I will not put to any profane use any 
more. 

March 12th. 

How will he come to my aid ? Under what form 
will he send my liberator? I can not even make a 


52 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


guess, and I lose myself in dreams as to how a saint can 
manage from heaven to come to the aid of a Colette 
here in the mountains. 

In what mysterious way will he cause a stranger to 
venture here? And how will this personage present 
himself? Will he ring the big bell at the entrance, and 
to announce himself will he say to Benoite, “ Here I am, 
mademoiselle ; it is I who have been sent by Saint Jo- 
seph ” ? 

I wonder and wonder until I give it up. 

Then I am afraid that my surmises and questionings 
are not the complete faith which Mother Lancien said 
was necessary. “ Blind faith,” she said. Then I shut 
my eyes and ears, and think of nothing. 

March ijth. 

I say my prayers so often, I kneel in front of my 
statuette so many times in the course of the day, that I 
am sometimes afraid of wearying him with my monot- 
ony, and I rack my brains to vary my formula. 

I turn my phrases, and put new words to the same 
idea; I choose my expressions with the coquetry of a 
careful writer, and I wish I knew several languages, so 
as to say my prayer in the morning in French, at noon 
in Italian, and at night in Spanish, to give variety. 

As the days go on, my hope becomes a certainty. 

Only five days more ! March 14th. 

In spite of myself, there are moments when I lose my 
calm. The event, which is approaching so rapidly, and 
which will change all my life, moves and agitates me. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


53 


It seems to me that I ought to begin to make some 
preparations for it, and this morning I began to arrange 
my wardrobe, and the little ornaments that I am fond of. 

While I was busy, Benoite came in, and as she 
looked at me while I was folding two summer dresses, 
she said, laughingly, “ Are you going away, my dear 
Colette? ” 

I did not answer, for I consider that I have not yet 
the right to confide in her ; but she did not know how 
truly she spoke. 


March 15th. 

Certainly, my saint and I understand each other bet- 
ter every day. This morning, as I 
was taking off the smallest possible 
particles of dust with my finest 
cambric handkerchief, it seemed to 
me that there was a smile in his 
eyes, and that he moved his branch 
of lilies slightly as a sign of encour- 
agement. 

March 16th. 

Is there something new in my 
face or manner, I wonder? for my 
aunt looks at me uneasily. 

I looked in the glass to see what 
I could have revealed; I only saw 
my cheeks a little rosier, and my eyes a little darker. 
It seems to me that all my colors are richer, and that 
everything about me heralds the approach of the great 
event. 



54 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


My poor “ One ” does not understand in the least 
what I am about. Formerly, when 1 kneeled on the 
floor it was to get nearer him, and he rolled himself up, 
ready to play, or to serve as a cushion. Now I force 
him to be absolutely silent, and my finger is always 
raised when he approaches me. 

March 17th. 

My agitation increases, and I do not know what new 
thing to do to show my fervor. 

My faith constantly grows stronger, so that I am 
even afraid it may become presumption, I feel so quiet 
and certain. I begin to count on my fingers the three 
cardinal virtues, but stop at faith. 

Faith moves mountains, it is said ; why, then, should 
it* not make the small breach in my walls that would en- 
able me to get out ? 

All seems favorable, and significant coincidences are 
not wanting. 

Of all the months of the year, this counsel was given 
to me in the month of March, the month of Saint Jo- 
seph, and this nine days’ prayer, which was begun by 
accident, without premeditation, almost without reflec- 
tion, will be ended on the fite - day of the saint ! 

Without being too sanguine, or being too eager, I 
may say that it is evident that this was arranged for me 
— a silent guardianship of which I understand perfectly 
the value, and know what the result will be ! 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


55 


March 18th. 

The wind blows, the snow falls in masses, and before 
this immaculate covering I am frightened to think of 
the risks of my poor traveler. 

Sometimes it seems to me that this aspect of nature 
is a picture of my life : level and colorless like the pure 
white snow that covers the fields — waiting for the 
marks of footsteps ! Then 1 forget analogies in think- 
ing of the present moment — the practical side of it 
all. 

Will he be able to make out his way between the 
two lines of hill ; and if an accident happens to him as 
to me, and he loses his footing suddenly on the edge of 
some ditch, who will come to warn me ? 

If I had still time, I would look for another saint, 
and I would pray him to lighten his way with a little 
sunshine, to make the journey less difficult. 

But that would be to doubt, and perhaps my own 
saint would be angry — so I trust myself to him en- 
tirely ! 

March igth. 

The day of the commencement of my new life, the 
day of destiny for me ! lam all agitation, and it seems 
to me that my blood is boiling in my veins and ready to 
burst forth. 

My prayers even do not tranquillize me. To-day I 
kneel in front of the window ; my voice can easily reach 
the altar, while I keep my eyes fixed on the court. 

Every noise agitates me, the least movement makes 
me tremble. I hear footsteps ! “ Are they his ? ” Some 


5 6 THE STORY OF COLETTE . 

one knocks ! “ Have they come to look for me ? ” — 

And so for everything. 

However, I do not think he can be here before 
noon. That hour is the epoch of the day. It is the 
middle, and, though we can not see the sun, we know 
that it turns in its course at that time. 

Also for me there would be an analogy — my early 
morning is finished, the full day is about to open. 

Everything is ready ! I have put on my most be- 
coming dress, and in my hair and at my belt I have put 
two little branches of green — the color of hope, the only 
thing that the cold has not killed in the park or in my 
heart! Without saying anything, I persuaded Benoite 
to make her breakfast a little better, so that I could in- 
vite a guest without embarrassment. And now I am 
waiting. . . . 

As in the song we used to sing in the convent, 

“ Midday is past," and nothing has happened. 

I am still waiting at the window, 

The coming night makes me sad. 

However, in the twilight I can still see a long dis- 
tance, and I watch without ceasing. How long the 
luncheon seemed to me ! In spite of myself, I could 
not keep my eyes from the window, though there was 
no need for such haste — since I am still alone. Doubt- 
less my saint prefers the evening shadows, and is wait- 
ing for the darkness to hide his face when he brings me 
my happiness. 

He has until midnight ; it is his right, and I prepare 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


5 7 

to watch. A huge log on the fire, my arm-chair near 
the window, and before the altar the last candle that re- 
mains to me, a very little one ! But to reach to heaven, 
not even that is needed, I think ; and as for my traveler 
— it is enough to make a red point in the darkness of the 
night, and my saint, if he chooses, can easily make it 
shine like a star. 

March 20th. 

I am sad, I am cold, and even in my bed I can not 
get warm after my long, cold watch. 

It is late— midnight. I never before watched so late, 
and at this hour, in this perfect calm and quiet, one feels 
one’s self so small, so insignificant ! 

Outside, the moon had risen over the great stretch 
of whiteness, and made long lines of silver light. The 
distant pine-trees seemed to have their branches fringed 
with crystal. But the hours were so long ! As the 
time approached, my heart beat faster, and it seemed 
to me as if it were something outside of me which made 
all this noise. Then, at the first of the twelve strokes, 
everything stopped. “ Now or never ! ” I thought, and 
I waited until the clock had finished striking, with my 
hands closely pressed over my eyes, waiting until it was 
over, to look. But after, as before, the court was empty, 
the bell silent, and the road without the least sign of 
life! 

At the same time my taper went out, with a little 
spluttering. It was burned out, I suppose, but, all the 
same, it seemed as if the image blew it out to show me 
that everything was over. It was dismal. The heart, 

5 


58 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


however, is so made that in spite of myself I took back 
my “never ” of a little while ago. It is not for now, it 
is true, but to-morrow will come, and one does not hag- 
gle with a saint for a fixed hour or minute, as if it were 
an ordinary bargain. 

Perhaps he prefers that nine days should be com- 
pletely finished, and to give the reward the next day. 
One can really give credit for twenty-four hours. 

So reflecting, I went to sleep, calmly, if without joy, 
and here I am again looking out. 

And now, how will to-day end ? 

March 23 d. 

How it ended ? O Heavens ! who could have fore- 
seen such a thing, and who could have thought that by 
a foolish imprudence I should nearly cause the death of 
a man ? 

How it happened I can hardly remember now, but 
the waiting without result made me nervous, I think. 

The hours that passed bringing me nothing were 
horribly long, and my hopes, as they left me, made me 
heart-sick. 

The more passionately I had believed, the more bit- 
ter was the disillusion, and little by little an intense 
anger and resentment seized me. 

It was all a deception ! 

Had I not prayed with all my heart? Then why 
were the promises not fulfilled ? 

I asked this aloud, begging and praying before my 
statue, and afterward getting angry and abusing it. 

But, of course, my reproaches had no more effect 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


59 

than my prayers. Only, in speaking, I excited myself, 
and I was angry at the silence of the metal, as if I could 
expect anything else. 

Since I told my saint all my troubles, and promised 
him all that my imagination and my heart could suggest, 
why did he remain silent ? 

When people are alone on the earth, with no one to 
listen to them, if they pray to heaven and no one listens 
to them there, what can they do ? 

And between each word I stopped, I waited, I gave 
him time — and always the same silence, and nothing 
happened. 

Then suddenly, revolted, exasperated, in such a pas- 
sion of anger as I had never known, and feeling that I 
had the right to revenge myself, I seized the statue, and 
with all my strength hurled it through the window into 
the road, crying out : 

“ You have deceived me. Go ! ” 

The glass that it had broken in its passage fell on the 
floor just as I heard a cry below. 

It was a man, and his face was covered with blood. 
My Saint Joseph had made a hole in his forehead above 
his left eye, and, as he fell back from the force of the 
blow, his feet had caught in the stones fallen from the 
wall, and his knee was broken. 

These last three nights Benoite and I have watched 
him, and as I sit waiting by his bed the tears fall. 


6o 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


March 24th. 

The doctor has been here, and the knee has been 
put in splints ; but the man’s head is not clear yet, which 
is a bad sign, it seems. 

We put ice on his head ; there is plenty of that here 
at least ; and as the doctor left just now, he said, tap- 
ping me on the shoulder: 

“ If he does not get well, it will not be your fault, 
little nurse. Have good courage.” 

Good courage, when I see his bandages and listen to 
his delirium ! However, I am glad to do all I can, and 
I am all the time trying to think of something more I 
can do for him. 

But what difficulties with my aunt ! what cries and 
scenes at the beginning ! At the moment when Be- 
noite and I, putting out all our strength, had succeeded 

in carrying the heavy 
weight into the kitch- 
en, she entered by an- 
other door. 

“ What is that ? ” 
she cried to me, 
throwing up her 
arms. 

“ A wounded 
man, aunt.” 

And as I spoke, 
we laid him down 
provisionally on a blanket spread before the hearth. 



THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


6l 


“ A wounded man ? What do you expect me to do 
with a wounded man ? Where did you find him ? ” 

And as she multiplied her questions, Benoite an- 
swered her, without ceasing her task : 

“ Mademoiselle struck him on the head, throwing 
something out of the window.” 

“ But who is he? What does he say? What does 
he want ? ” 

“ He wants to be let alone, and something to stop 
the blood,” I could not help answering, shrugging my 
shoulders. 

“ I will not have him — you know I will not have 
him ! ” she replied, moving away. “ I do not receive 
men here.” 

“ I do not offer him to you,” I replied, more firmly ; 
“ it is my affair.” 

“ And what will you do with him ? ” 

“ I shall take care of him, of course.” 

“ Where, and with whom ? Alone, night and day ? ” 

“ With my nurse, and I will give him my room.” 

“You are a fool!” she said, violently, turning her 
back ; “ I can hinder that.” 

“ How ? By putting him out, and leaving him to die 
in the darkness? ” 

“ Nonsense ! ” she replied. “ These are big words ; 
one does not die of such a trifle. In less than an hour 
you will see that the man himself will wish to go away, 
and he will certainly not understand your lamenta- 
tions.” 

“ You may be sure I shall not force him to stay.” 


62 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ And if he remains as he is, what do you expect to 
do?” 

“ I have told you already,” I replied, completely los- 
ing patience, and raising my handkerchief that I was 
holding against the wound ; “ I intend to cure the wound 
that you see there, and when it is healed, and he is ready 
to go away, as you said, I intend to beg him with all my 
might to pardon me the evil I have done him. Do you 
understand ? ” 

And not wishing to hear anything more, or to add 
anything to this odious discussion, which I was afraid 
might reach the ears of the wounded man, I sent Benoite 
to prepare what was necessary, while I remained on my 
knees by his side, moistening his forehead with water, 
and waiting with the greatest anxiety the first sign of 
life. 

But his lips remained closed and white, and the little 
stream of blood continued to trickle down on the white 
wool, making a rapidly increasing spot. 

My aunt walked up and down on the other side of 
the room like a caged lioness, murmuring incessantly the 
same things. Gradually the fear grew on me that the 
closed eyes would never open, and that I was bending 
over the forehead of a dead man, on which the mark of 
my hand would remain forever. 

Then all at once I saw Benoite run past and from the 
door-step call loudly to some one to stop ; and a second 
after the doctor entered with her. 

Certainly, Providence sent him by our little road ; 
and my nurse, who had seen him from the window, had 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


63 

been able to stop him in time. An hour later, they had 
together installed the poor man in his bed, dressed his 
wounded head, and brought back, if not his intelligence, 
at least his respiration, which was now easy and regular. 

With the authority which a stranger and a physician 
alone could exercise over my aunt, the doctor, indignant 
at her talk, made her go out at once. When he took his 
leave she was still in the hall beside me, complaining 
and repeating her refusal to take care of the wounded 
man. As soon as she saw the doctor she exclaimed : 

“ You know, doctor, this is not my affair ; I will have 
nothing to do with it ! ” 

“ Quite right, madame,” he replied brusquely ; “ young 
hands are more gentle and lighter for dressing wounds, 
and a fresh young face is good for the sight of a sick 
person.” 

It is three days since then. If the fever is a little 
less, his ideas are always wandering. 

The name that he pronounces oftenest is that of a 
certain Jacques, and he makes the most extraordinary 
discourses to him, with such queer words that, in spite 
of myself, I laugh and cry at the same time. Then he 
repeats the only phrase which he has uttered since he 
fell. At the moment when Benoite and I ran out, he 
was lying on the ground, but not quite unconscious, and 
as I reached him, crying out, “ Good heavens, sir, what 
has happened ? ” he raised himself on one knee, and with 
something of a smile, if a man can smile in such a state — 

“ Ah ! ah ! ” he said, “ it is the Brahman ! ” 

Then he fell, and we carried him in. His Brahman 


6 4 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


has come back occasionally since then, and I can not 
understand what he means by it. 

We know nothing at all as to who or what he is. 
The doctor has inquired at the village inns ; no traveler 
answering to his description had been seen, and it looks 
as if he sprang out of the earth into our unlucky road. 

His clothes are elegant. He has a short, tight-fitting 
coat in superb fur ; his hands are white ; and all of his 
face that the bandage does not cover is handsome. 

In his pocket, nothing but a card-case without ad- 
dress, and, for a valise, a small black leather bag, which 
he carried on his back. I hate the idea of forcing it open, 
and the doctor consents to wait a few days, hoping that 
he will be able to answer for himself. 

Benoite makes the wildest suppositions. 

“ He is perhaps a peddler,” she said to me just now, 
looking at the odd shape of his luggage ; “ or perhaps a 
photographer. Some of them have as little with them.” 

I do not believe that. From his hands, his eyebrows, 
and his beard, I am sure he may be a duke or a count, 
and in any case a gentleman, and I try to guess his age 
and name. 

Is he handsome ? I do not think so, and I do not now 
give a thought. My remorse and my torments occupy 
me completely, so that I take neither food nor sleep, and 
the doctor was very angry at finding me still up this 
morning. 

He used his authority to make me go down and walk 
in the court. 

But the air was too much for me ; I felt ill, and went 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 6 ^ 

back to the bedside, determined not to leave it again 
until the patient’s consciousness should return. 

If I could hear one sensible word to show that his 
head is all right, the rest would be nothing. 


March 25th . 

He has spoken- -it is accomplished ! and I am so 
wild with happiness that I should like to cry it 
aloud. 

Last evening, in spite of being sleepy, I insisted on 
watching, and in order to be more at my ease than in 
my dresses with tight sleeves and double skirts, which 
catch upon everything, I had put on, in place of a dress- 
ing-gown, the least faded of the old silk dresses that I 
hunted out last summer in the store-room. In the wide 
skirt, straight and simple, with the waist which seemed 
made for me, I felt myself so comfortable that, I hardly 
know how it happened, very soon I fell asleep in my 
arm-chair, and so quickly that I made no struggle to 
keep awake, and remained so, completely forgetting my 
patient, for perhaps two hours. 

Then the dimly burning lamp, the dying fire, and the 
feeling of cold and sadness that always comes at those 
hours, woke me, and I ran to look at the clock. 

In a few minutes more, the time would arrive for 
giving him his medicine. I had yet time to make up 
the fire, for the room was getting cold. 

I was on my knees, placing a large stick of wood on 
the coals, and blowing with my mouth the bits of dry 
moss, when suddenly I heard a voice speaking to me. 


66 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


My surprise was so great that I jumped up with a cry 
of fright, understanding nothing at first. 

Then immediately I thought of the wounded man, 
and ran to the bed. It was really he who called. Rest- 
ing on his elbow, his uncovered eye wide open, and 
looking at me with intense curiosity, he seemed more 
surprised than he would have been if he had found him- 
self suddenly transported to the other world, and, be- 
fore renewing his question, he waited so long, looking 
at me from head to foot, that I was going to question 
him myself, when, anticipating me, he broke in : 

“ Madame/’ he said, hesitating, as if to see whether 
I would protest, “ I beg you to tell me where I am.” 

“ In the Chateau of Erlange de Fond-de-Vieux, sir,” 
I replied, trembling a little. 

“ Perfectly unknown ! ” he muttered. “ Then you 
are the chatelaine?” he continued, raising his head. 

“ Half— yes.” 

“And, excuse my stupidity, I beg, madame; but, re- 
ally, I think I have lost my senses — what am I doing 
here, if you please ? ” 

“ Waiting to get well. After your terrible accident 
we brought you in here, and — ” 

“ Ah ! it was an accident,” said he ; and as I was 
about to say to him, “ I beg you to be sure it was noth- 
ing else,” he continued, always with the same calm man- 
ner : 

“ Will you oblige me, madame, still further by telling 
me in what year we are ? ” 

If I had not seen the perfect calm of his face, I 























































































rr> 



“ In 1885, sir.” 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


67 


should have supposed that he was again delirious, but 
he spoke with perfect self-possession, and I replied me- 
chanically : 

“ In 1885, sir.” 

“ Really ! ” said he in a low voice, as if speaking to 
himself; “ I should not have thought it was the fashion.” 
Then, without transition: “ Will it be possible for you 
to give me pen and paper, in order that I may write to 
a friend who must be very anxious about me ? ” 

“ M. Jacques ? ” I asked, in spite of myself. 

“ Precisely,” he replied. “ Has he then been here, 
madame ? ” 

* “ No, but in your delirium — ” 

“ Ah! I have been delirious,” said he. “ Hum ! have 
I spoken for young ears?” 

And as I shook my head without reflection — 

“ Yes? Very well, so much the better. Frenzy has 
then more good sense than reason. And you will be so 
kind, madame, as to give me — ” 

“ All you w^ant to-morrow. It is night now, and one 
does not write at night.” 

“ Why,” he asked, “ when one has lamps ? ” And he 
smiled to himself at what he said, like a child. 

“ Because the doctor orders the most complete calm 
and repose for you, and he would never forgive me for 
having permitted it,” I replied. 

His eyebrows contracted like those of a person un- 
used to resistance, and he thrust out his arm so quickly 
that, in spite of myself, I stepped back. He smiled 
again then, and, inclining his head — 


68 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ Do not be afraid, and excuse me for keeping you 
standing. In truth, a sick man is a poor cavalier.” And 
with his finger he pointed to an arm-chair. 

For my part I was confounded. This man awaking 
from delirium among strangers, suffering very much, 
who spoke tranquilly on each subject, in this half-sar- 
castic manner, without inquiring what the accident was 
which had thrown him into this bed — he resembled 
nothing that I had ever imagined. 

Without sitting down, I had placed my hand on the 
back of the chair, and stood there before this remark- 
able person, speechless and in a maze. Then the half- 
hour struck, and I remembered his medicine. 

“You must drink this,” I said, taking the glass 
already prepared from the table. 

But he drew back with a decided gesture of refusal, 
and I repeated anxiously, in a suppliant tone : 

“ I beg you ; it is to make you sleep.” 

“ I know it very well,” he muttered between his 
teeth ; “ it is in the piece ! ” He drank it without 
another word ; then added, as Benoite, whom I had 
forced to rest a little on her bed, entered softly— “ And 
here is old Franqois.” 

He placed his head on the pillow, murmuring 
“ Thanks,” and ten minutes after he was asleep, until 
the doctor came, who is with him now. 

The doctor is satisfied, or partially so ; in any case, 
there is no danger now of congestion. 

On the other hand, the disposition of our singular 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


69 

patient surprises him as much as it did me, and just 
now, in leaving him, he wiped his forehead and ex- 
claimed : 

“ What a willful man ! My poor child, why did he 
not stay in his stupor a month longer? We shall have 
hard work to manage him now. He wanted nothing 
less than to get up and travel.” 

It seems that as soon as the doctor entered, this 
morning, he half sat up in bed, paying no more atten- 
tion to his splintered leg than if it did not exist, and 
began to thank him briefly and courteously for the 
attention he had given him. 

“It is hardly weather in which one ought to give 
the faculty the trouble of going about the country 
roads,” he said, “ and I beg you to accept my apologies.” 

Then he began a series of questions like those he had 
addressed to me in the night, which proves that my an- 
swers did not seem very clear to him, and asking them 
all so rapidly that the doctor declares they took his 
breath away. 

Once reassured about his geographical position, 
which evidently seemed doubtful to him, he eagerly 
sought to learn exactly what was the matter with him. 

“ I feel something like a great ball there,” he said to 
me, pointing to his knee ; “ what is it ? I suppose you 
have not cut off my leg without telling me ? And here 
— have I been trepanned, that I have my head in band- 
ages ? ” 

The doctor reassured him as best he could, but he is 
not one of those patients who is deceived by words. 


70 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


He questioned closely why and how the thing- hap- 
pened, and required to have described to him all the 
bones and ligaments injured. After which he asked for 
a mirror, and the doctor handed him one from his case. 

“This is a pretty business!” he grumbled. “To 
destroy what there is best in my face. But, bah ! a tile 
fell on the head of the great Pyrrhus : why should I not 
perish by the neck of a bottle ? ” 

“ There is no question of perishing,” the doctor re- 
plied. 

“ I certainly hope not,” he answered. “ I am still a 
little feeble this morning, but in less than a week I shall 
have delivered my hostess from 
the inconvenient charge of a 
sick stranger. Tell her so, doc- 
tor, I beg you.” 

And as the doctor bowed his 
head without answering, with 
a gesture that clearly signified, 
“ Go on, my friend — I do not 
wish to contradict you, but you 
are talking very foolishly,” the 
young man perceived that this 
manner of assent was only a way 
of calming a feverish person, and that there was prob- 
ably a very different idea behind those large white eye- 
brows. 

He began then to question the doctor imperiously, 
to make him name the day and hour when he would 
be cured, insisting that the truth should be told to a 



THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


71 


person of his age, so that the doctor ended by fixing as 
a first date a month, reserving to himself the right of 
adding another to it in case of need. 

At this he became furious. 

“A month! doctor,” he cried — “a month! You 
want to keep me here a month ! You can not be serious. 
I beg you to believe that 1 have planned quite other em- 
ployment for my spring than watching my bones knit. 
And it can go on quite as well somewhere else as here, 
I imagine. A month ! Why, in a month I shall be 
sleeping on a macaw mat, with six slaves to fan me, and 
the sky of India above my head.” 

“Then you will have found a very fast vessel, my 
dear sir,” said the doctor, laughing. “ But let us reason 
a little. You are not particularly anxious, I suppose, to 
be lame all your life simply for want of a few days’ 
care ? ” 

“ Certainly not, for I make more use of my feet than 
most men ; but, with my leg in this box, what does it 
matter whether I sleep in a bed or a carriage ? it will be 
kept motionless all the same.” 

“ Perhaps so, if you travel on clouds.” 

“ Even without that,” he resumed with vivacity. 
“ There are the sleeping-cars. No matter how wild 
your mountains are, I can certainly find twelve men 
who will carry me to the nearest station. There are 
railroads all the way to the sea ; once there, without a 
movement, on a lighter and an inclined plane such as 
are used for heavy freight, I can get on board, where I 
shall have all the time my bones need to mend.” 

6 


72 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ Is it for an important affair?” the doctor asked. 

“ Simply for my own pleasure, and because I wish 
it.” 

On this, without a word, the doctor put on his hat 
and took his overcoat from the chair where it was dry- 
ing before the fire ; but when the sick man saw him 
ready to leave he became so violently agitated that the 
good doctor approached the bed. 

“ I should like very much to know who is going to 
keep me from doing what I like,” said the stranger, 
growing still more agitated. 

“On my word, my dear sir, I am,” replied the 
doctor, putting down his hat and reseating himself 
quietly. “ Let us understand each other once for all, 
and, as you like plain dealing, let us have it. 

“ First, let me tell you that your knee, and you your- 
self, might have been of no consequence to me, and I 
beg you to believe that, had the circumstances been 
different, if you did not care that your broken bones 
should knit, I should leave you to fall to pieces with 
the best grace in the world. But at present I am 
your physician, and that changes the case completely. 
Have you been a soldier, my dear sir? I do not know, 
but it is probable ; in any case, you know what the 
army is and what makes its force — I mean obedience 
to orders. A soldier is placed at a post, with orders 
to let no one pass. Why ? Wherefore ? In whose 
name? He knows nothing at all; but in the name of 
this order he will lower his bayonet against friend 
or foe. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


7 3 


“ With us it is much the same case. I see you on a 
road, I do not know you, you are nothing- to me, and I 
would not put the least obstacle in your way. But a 
fall, a wound, something knocks you down, and you be- 
long to me ; I return and pick you up, and carry you 
off, and I must answer for you as the soldier does the 
door that he guards. Try to pass this door, and I 
lower my pike, I warn you ! ” 

“ Doctor,” the young man replied at once, stretching 
out his hand, “ pardon me, and rest assured that I con- 
sider myself a prisoner on parole. You must not ex- 
cuse me by thinking that illness makes me ill-tempered, 
for I am always just as you see me ; but I confess that, 
obstinate as I am, if I am struck hard and in the right 
place, I yield.” 

“ When one is warned, it is sufficient,” replied the 
good doctor. And he left his troublesome patient, with 
the desired writing materials. 

In the mean time, the passport of our stranger has 
told us approximately who he is. 

His name is Count Pierre de Civreuse, and, as nearly 
as one can judge at first sight, the doctor tells me, his 
profession is to do foolish things. He is a gentleman — 
the doctor agrees — and evidently of an uncommon char- 
acter. 

The doctor then told him my aunt’s name and mine, 
so we are introduced to each other; but the doctor 
said nothing yet about the real cause of the accident, 
being apprehensive on account of the irritability of our 
patient, and this is an immense relief to me. This 


74 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


stranger frightens me more and more, and I do not see 
how I can endure any explanation with him. 

Benoite, who has been arranging his room, tells me 


that he is still writing, and I will 
leave him in peace with his friend 
Jacques, though I am anxious to 
know how this will end, and how 
I can ever tell him the truth, and 
obtain the pardon of such an un- 
manageable person. 



Pierre de Civreuse to Jacques de Colonges. 


You have thought me dead, my good fellow, have 
you not? — and I can tell you that for some days I 
thought so too. 

For I do not know how many hours I was buried, I 
do not know where. Doubtless, where all unconscious 
souls go ; and it seemed to me so far underground and 
so heavy that, with my little remaining resolution, I 
kept trying to force open the planks of my coffin 
with my shoulder. Certainly, at that distance, one has 
taken half of the final journey, and reached the place 
where the smallest grain of weight will turn the bal- 
ance. 

Happily for me, I have swung over to the good side, 
humanly speaking, you understand, and I woke up one 
fine evening rather bruised by my fall ; but one does not 
fall such a distance without perceiving the effect, espe- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


75 

dally when one’s knee is well packed in a pine-wood 
box, and one’s head in bandages. 

Midnight was striking on a clock, the favorite hour 
for those who come back from beyond the grave, and 
that was the first material thing of which I became con- 
scious. 

If I have not completely forgotten what happens in 
the world, I said to myself, these little machines never 
strike more than twelve times ; if this one does not ex- 
ceed the number, it proves that I am on the earth, and 
quite alive. 

And it did not ; and, sure of my identity, I opened 
my eyes to look about me. 

My friend, do you know “ La Fee ” of Octave Feuil- 
let — a charming little piece which is often played — and 
have you seen it? Well, that evening — it was yester- 
day, I think — I woke up in the first act of “ La Fee,” 
and I made the responses to Mademoiselle d’Athol in 
person, during one or two acts. Do not imagine that I 
am joking — listen. 

The first thing that a sick man thinks of examining 
is his bed. Mine had twisted columns hung with Louis 
XIII or Louis XIV tapestry — I will not swear which — 
and a spread in silk, which we will call curtain, if you 
are willing. The room in which I lay was very large, 
dimly lighted by two yellowish candles placed in huge 
candlesticks ; it was paneled with carved oak, and one 
guessed, rather than saw, high, high up, the beams of 
the ceiling, picked out with a narrow band of gold 
which shone from place to place. 


76 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


Against the wall stood stiff sofas, which made my 
back ache only to look at ; there was a collection of 
prie-dieu all alike, arranged in a row, as if for matins ; 
and the floor was without the shadow of a carpet. 

Finally, before the chimney, in an arm-chair — you 
guessed that I was keeping this chair for the end, did 
you not? — a little lady, slight, elegant, and blonde, 
was sleeping quite erect in a dress of pink satin, with a 
long, pointed waist. Her dress was at least two hun- 
dred years old ; her face, eighteen — how to make them 
agree ? I worked at this problem so long that the little 
lady awoke suddenly, without preliminary movements. 

She threw a glance toward my bed, like a pupil 
caught in a fault ; in the shadow I seemed to be sleep- 
ing soundly, I think, and, reassured on this point, like a 
faithful vestal she gave her attention to the fire. 

She bends down, arranges the coals, blows with all 
her might, scattering the ashes in her hair ; then with 
her hands she takes a great log, the fourth of a moder- 
ate-sized oak, and places it promptly on the hearth. 

She moves, she lives, so that the idea of a chatelaine 
of ancient days petrified in her nest by some enchant- 
ment leaves me, and it is at this moment that I see 
myself in the chateau in Brittany, where Jeanne Athol 
is preparing her pious subterfuges, and converting the 
skeptical De Comminges solely by the charm of her 
grandmother’s dress and her old-fashioned speech. Only, 
this time she had forgotten her powder, and the color 
of her hair destroyed the illusion. I call her as gently 
as I can ; she jumps up, crying out. Evidently my 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


77 


awakening was not in the programme, and she is much 
startled. However, she approaches, and we converse a 
moment, going from blunder to blunder, she willfully 
misleading me ; I showing clearly that I understand the 
part she is playing. At last she gets rid of me, in the 
usual way, with a narcotic, which sends me to sleep ; 
not too quickly, however, for me to see the third person, 
an old duenna, wrinkled like a last year’s apple, with 
small bright eyes, which seem to look through you, and 
who will play perfectly the part of old Frangois ; then 
the curtain falls, and I wake up the next morning, still 
among the same surroundings, but beside me is a witty 
and capricious doctor, who in two words explains my 
case to me, and who, when I try to revolt, reduces me 
to order so quickly that I am still a little stupefied by it. 

If you wish to know the whole truth, my friend, my 
head is cut open and my leg broken. Would you have 
believed that these were such fragile things ? I should 
not, and I touch myself now with the greatest tender- 
ness and respect. 

Is it conceivable that between the fibula and tibia 
such a violent disagreement can be produced ? Splin- 
ters in one place, broken bones in another, and in the 
midst of it all a knee-pan out of place, like a compass that 
has lost the north and can not get back to it. As to my 
skull, it is the sinus frontalis which is injured, but I am 
promised that in a few days it will be solidly mended. 

On the whole I joke, but I am furious as I know how 
to be in my best moments, and the thought of the task 
which will keep you at your uncle’s some months adds 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


78 

not a little to my annoyance. Weeks of immobility, 
without you to keep me company ! Can you imagine 
me, with my little lady in pink as sole resource, under 
six feet of snow ? For I forgot to tell you that, like the 
wheat sown in autumn, we are really under the snow ; 
it is only necessary for us to germinate, and, to come 
here to take care of me, my doctor has to wear alter- 
nately seven-league boots and Norwegian skates. 

Now, as to the cause, 1 hear you asking, and what 
the devil are you doing in such a place ? 

Here is the reason: You may remember that I in- 
tended, before going to the country of the sun, to come 
and freeze myself and see a real winter — as gourmands 
prepare for a good dinner by fasting and open-air exer- 
cise. 

For this purpose I stopped at a little village whose 
name you would not recognize, for you do not know it 
any more than I knew it yesterday, and, carrying a kind 
of haversack, I went off on foot among the mountains. 

I made inquiries about my route, to this extent that 
I knew that if I walked straight ahead I ought to come 
to an elevation, whence I should have a superb view — a 
pine-forest, a vista opening on a valley, and even a 
chateau. 

At the end of five hundred yards I was in complete 
solitude, and, if you have never happened to wander 
about the country at this season of the year, you can not 
imagine how much more complete this solitude is than 
any other. Wherever one places his foot, there are no 
other foot-prints, there is no sound of animals — every- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


79 

where a brilliant uniformity, which is admirable during 
the first half-hour, fatiguing during the second, and 
enervating and blinding during the third. 

No more inequalities of ground, no more hollows 
or hillocks ; everything is level, 
a republican equality. At dis- 
tant intervals a band of ravens 
swoop down with the insolent ^ 
cries of the last survivors. 

It is their hour, and they 
know it. There are snow 
on the bushes and tears of 
clear frost. The dew 
three months old, and 



is 


will last several weeks 
longer before it evap- 
orates ; and a frightful 
north wind seems to 
cut one’s face to pieces. 

However, the longest road 

has an end, and I found successively the vista of the 
valley, the forest, and the fine view promised, when the 
chateau itself appeared to me. I spare you its descrip- 
tion, having seen it myself very imperfectly, as you will 
soon perceive. 

One of the wings opens on the road. It was before 
this one that I stopped, and innocently occupied myself 
in brushing the snow off a large stone, so as to sit down 
and look about me at my leisure, impressed as I was by 
the savage melancholy of the place. 


8o 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


A singular curiosity seized me. It seemed to me 
that behind these walls something original and unex- 
pected must be concealed, and I was suddenly stung 
by a strong desire to penetrate them. You will remem- 
ber, besides, that anything concealed and inaccessible 
has always tempted me, and I can not remember, as a 
boy, ever to have stolen an apple off the lower branch- 
es. Of the high ones I will not say as much. 

At the same time, the remembrance of our last con- 
versation came back to me. Do you remember the 
evening when we were talking together of my journey, 
and you were preaching prudence to me ? “ Once in 

India,” I told you, “ I mean to see everything, especially 
the things which are concealed from European eyes. I 
mean to get into the family life and all the private rites 
and ceremonies, to know the habits that are curious 
or ignoble, and to learn all the mysteries of their wor- 
ship, even if I have to assume twenty disguises to arrive 
at the feet of Brahma and adore him unveiled and 
according to the rites.” And you — you replied pru- 
dently : “ Beware ! every man is jealous of his secret 
and the inviolability of his fireside, but the Oriental 
more than any other, and, for the pleasure of walking 
where no other man has trod, you risk some great mis- 
fortune.” 

“From whom?” I asked you, laughing. “Do you 
think the god will disturb himself for me ; and shall I 
have the pleasure of seeing him put his eighteen legs in 
motion to get down from his pedestal ? ” 

“ Not the god, perhaps, but one of his worshipers 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


8l 


without compunction ; and if you penetrate the sacred 
inclosure you may very possibly meet some Brahman 
who will not hesitate to take strong measures to force 
you to respect the consecrated limits.” 

Why was I thinking of all this at that moment? 
Was it because I wondered if the susceptibility of 
Frenchmen would be as quickly aroused as that of 
Indians ? or that unconsciously I was measuring with 
my eye the height of the walls and looking for a pro- 
jection on which to place my foot? I can not say; 
but just at this instant a great noise of broken glass 
made me raise my head, and, before I could speak, a 
projectile whose nature I do not know was thrown at 
me by a sure hand, striking me full in the forehead. 
The blow was so violent that it made me stagger, and, 
catching my feet among the stones, I fell on one knee 
with my whole weight, without being able to save my- 
self, and so awkwardly that the wounds I have told you 
of are the result. 

Could one’s indiscretion be more promptly punished, 
or the results you foresaw have been more quickly at- 
tained, than this crushing of my curiosity in the bud, 
and this finding your Brahman at the third degree of 
longitude ? 

Some one ran out frightened, with confused excla- 
mations ; but I would have sworn that a thick fog had 
suddenly risen from the ground, for I distinguished 
nothing more, and must have lost consciousness at 
once. 

I have no remembrance of the first attentions that 


82 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


were given to me, and my sleep in the other world 
lasted, it appears, four whole days. 

As to the author of my wound and the instrument 
of my punishment, all around me express themselves 
so vaguely that I am reduced to drawing my own 
conclusions ; but when I see my little pink lady, or even 
the old woman with the bright eyes, 1 intend to find 
out. 

In the mean while I have learned the name of the 
manor: it is the chateau of Erlange de Fond-de-Vieux, 
and you can direct your letters to me here. 

The postman comes up here from time to time — 
always, in fact, when the package of letters for the 
neighboring village seems to him large enough, or 
when he is intrusted by the butcher or grocer with 
some commission which seems to him worth the trouble. 

It is inhabited by only two women — Mademoiselle 
d’Epine and Mademoiselle d’ Erlange — who are aunt and 
niece ; and when I hinted to the doctor that I might 
be an embarrassment to them in more than one way, he 
denied it with so much good nature, that I could only 
put my scruples aside, and accept their hospitality. 

By-the-way, did I tell you that the doctor speaks of 
a month without moving, which in the mouth of a doctor 
means double that, and that he insists that I shall lie flat 
on my back? 

This idea made me furious, and when I think that, 
for a platonic contemplation of a wall — a contemplation 
which lasted in all ten minutes, and which was, after all, 
perfectly harmless — I have to pass weeks with no society 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 83 

but two women, when I might be hunting tigers in the 
jungle, I am ready to lose all my remaining calmness ! 

“ But since you are in the place that you were so 
ready to enter, of what do you complain ? ” you will 
say. 

Exactly, my dear friend, it is because I am here that 
I now want to go out ; I have seen all there is to see, 
and there is not enough to divert an octogenarian. 

But hush, Jacques ! Some one is knocking at the 
door, and it is a gentle tap, that can only come from 
delicate fingers. Get down behind the bed, my friend 
— be sure that I will tell you all about it presently. 

March 25th. 

After the doctor left yesterday, I waited a long time 
before going back to the room of Monsieur de Civreuse, 
wishing to leave him free to write to his friend, and 
finally I did not know how to manage about going in. 
To knock and go in and sit down in my usual place, 
would be to force him to talk to me ; and, on the other 
hand, I could not leave him entirely alone, as he might 
want something. 

I would have sent Benoite ; but my aunt, who pre- 
tends to be unconscious of the presence of the wounded 
man, has given her all sorts of extra work these last few 
days, and keeps her in her room under the pretext of 
having the curtains beaten. 

At last I had an idea, and, calling my dog, I made 
him understand gently what I expected of him, and 
where he was to carry the paper that I attached to his 


8 4 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


collar. Then I knocked softly at the door, and drew 
back to let him in. 

On the paper I had written : “ Monsieur de Civreuse 
is begged to say whether he wishes to stay alone, or if 
he needs anything. The dog will bring back the answer, 
or will wait for it as long as is desired ; it is only neces- 
sary to say to him, ‘ Go/ ” 

After a few moments I heard “ One ” scratching at 
the door, and in his collar was my note, on the back 
of which was written : “ Monsieur de Civreuse hardly 
dares confess he is dying of hunger and thirst, and that 
in jumping up just now to hold up his neck the faithful 
messenger knocked over the table with the ink-stand. 
He is full of regret at being unable to pick them up him- 
self/’ 

I went in at once, and quickly righted the table and 
wiped up the ink as well as I could, while Monsieur de 
Civreuse said interrogatively : “ Mademoiselle d’Epine ? 
Mademoiselle d’Erlange ? ” “ Mile. d’Erlange,” I an- 

swered quickly, not in the least pleased at the confusion. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said ; “ there are aunts of 
all ages.” Then, as I rubbed the floor with my foot, he 
began to excuse himself for the harm he had done, but I 
reassured him at once, telling him I did not mind a spot 
in the least, if it is not on me — which is the simple 
truth. 

I asked him if he wanted any particular thing to eat, 
but warned him that the larder of Erlange is rustic ; and 
he replied that, as he was preparing to undertake a jour- 
ney in countries where he might not be able to find food 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 85 

every day, he should be only too happy to dine regularly, 
no matter on what. 

I succeeded in getting Benoite away from my aunt 
for a quarter of an hour to bring some food, and when 
she was gone I finished helping him — pouring out the 
wine, cutting the bread, etc. While he was eating, 
which he did with a good appetite, Monsieur de Civreuse 
asked me several questions in his cold and indifferent 
tone, which not only frightens me, but makes me answer 
all wrong, I suppose, for he looks at me, from time to 
time, as if I had said the most stupid thing in the world. 
After a little while I began to make his coffee. 

Benoite had left the coffee, and water boiling on the 
coal, and had instructed me what to do ; but, alas ! it is 
such a new business for me, that when I was ready to 
begin I could not remember a word of what she had 
told me, and I was on my knees before the fire, the 
kettle in one hand and the coffee in the other, in terrible 
perplexity. 

I knew very well that I had to put one in the other, 
but which must I begin with, and how was I to mix 
them ? 

To pour the water into the wooden box seemed to 
me queer ; it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to 
pour the coffee into the kettle. If I went to ask Benoite, 
I should have to endure an hour of cries and reproaches 
from my aunt ; and, on the other hand, Monsieur de 
Civreuse from his bed watched me with his eye with a 
quiet curiosity that exasperated me. I decided suddenly, 
and emptied the box of coffee into the water, and put 


86 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


the whole on the fire, and allowed it to boil a mo- 
ment. 

“ Will you allow me to help you? ” I asked as I ap- 
proached him. 

“ With pleasure,” he replied calmly, holding out his 
cup. 

Alas ! it was like mud — black, thick, and horrible- 
looking, and settled in the bottom of the cup in a most 
untempting manner. 

I stopped, very much embarrassed, exclaiming : 

“ It is not right ; I must have made a mistake, but I 
do not know how to make coffee.” 

“ Nor I either,” Monsieur Pierre replied, still hold- 
ing his cup ; “ only, I think they generally make use of 

that,” and he pointed 
with his finger to the 
coffee-pot, which Be- 
noite had placed on 
the table, and which I 
had quite forgotten ; 
and when I asked him 
quickly why he had 
not told me, he re- 
plied : 

“ I thought you 
were making it in the Turkish 
fashion.” 

Finally, I strained a cupful for him through a 
square of muslin, and he drank it all up without a 
word. 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 87 

“ So you have resumed your true form,” he said, as 
I took my usual place in my arm-chair. 

“ My true form ? But I am always like this.” 

“ Not last night.” 

“ Oh ! because I had put on that old-fashioned dress ! 
The fact is, I must have looked strange, and I wonder 
what you thought when you saw me.” 

“ I thought I had had the good fortune to find a 
place where Time had stopped his clock, and had not 
wound it up for two hundred years.” 

“ Why the good fortune ? ” 

“ Because I know nothing so inane as the present 
age,” he said. 

“ I could tell you something more inane still,” I re- 
plied quickly. “ It is not to know the present age at all, 
and that is my case.” 

“ Do not alarm yourself ; you resemble it much more 
than you suppose,” said he. Then, thinking that, after 
all, the phrase was not very polite, he went on hastily, 
before I could say a word : 

“ And your dog, mademoiselle. Why have you left 
him outside ? Not on my account, I hope.” 

“ I was afraid he might tire you,” and, as he shook 
his head, I ran to open the door, and that foolish “ One ” 
came in with a bound, rolling over on my feet, resting 
his nose on my knees, and nearly knocking me over in 
the ardor of his caresses. 

Monsieur de Civreuse watched him without a word, 
and when I kneeled down in front of him to put his 
paws around my neck — 


88 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ You love him very much?” he asked. 

“ Infinitely,” 1 replied, fervently. “ My poor old 
nurse first, and him next : those are my two best 
friends.” 

“ And the aunt comes third?” he said in a low voice, 
more to himself than to me, I think. I muttered in the 
same tone : 

“ Not even that.” But he did not hear, I suppose ; 
and I got up to clear off the table. 

After a moment he asked me what time it was, and 
when I had told him, I could not help adding : 

“ I am afraid that the days will seem very long to 
you, and that you will be much bored in a little while.” 

“ Oh, it is not of myself that I think; it was for you 
that I am anxious. What a load, what a responsibility, 
to have a helpless stranger suddenly thrust on your 
hands, and what a great deal of trouble it will give 
you ! ” 

He was beginning a long phrase of thanks, when I 
interrupted him quickly : 

“ Do not think that ; it is exactly the contrary. I am 
so glad ! it amuses me very much.” 

I thought of my solitude in speaking thus, and the 
delight of leading a busy life for at least two months ; 
but he took it in another sense, I suppose, for, shutting 
his lips, and inclining his head ceremoniously, he con- 
tinued : 

“ Ah ! so much the better ; misfortune has its com- 
pensations, and I am delighted that some one benefits 
by my accident.” 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


Benoite came in just then, and I took the opportu- 
nity to slip out, for I did not know what to say. 

On the whole, this gentleman does not please me at 
all, and if it were not for the passionate desire I have to 
obtain his pardon, and to make him gradually forget my 
deplorable violence, I would take an immense dislike to 
him immediately, and show it to him pretty clearly. 

His imperturbable calm seems to me like a bridle to 
check my vivacity — as if it were his business ! and his 
mocking eye, which watches all I do, gives me a wild 
desire to be impertinent. Once his bandage off, and 
two eyes watching me, it will be unbearable ; I seem to 
feel them on me now, through the door. 


Pierre to Jacques. 

My friend, I have learned the whole truth, for I 
manoeuvred so skillfully during a tete-a-tete that I had by 
chance with Benoite, the faithful guardian of Mile. d’Er- 
lange, that I made her tell me all that the doctor 
thought best to conceal. 

To begin, I left you, I think, watching behind the 
curtain for the entrance of my blonde fairy of last night, 
and curious to see her by day. 

Well, my friend, you may believe me or not, as you 
like, but the magic went on, and she came this time 
under the familiar and pleasing form of a huge, curly 
Newfoundland dog. 

The intelligent animal marched directly to my bed, 


9 o 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


and, raising himself on his hind-legs with the grace of 
the elephants in the hippodrome, bent his head to show 
me a little white paper attached to his collar: “And 
then the beautiful princess dispatched him, a messenger 
under the form of a hippogriff with three heads, who 
should, with many details, declare to him her will.” 

The “will” in this case was drawn up in simple 
style, and in substance was as follows : “ What does 
Monsieur de Civreuse need most?” The writing was 
as irregular as the branches of a willow-tree in a high 
wind, wandering all over the little square of paper, and 
the last words, being crowded, literally were piled one 
on top of the other. 

Instantly I augured ill of its author. A woman 
need not write at all, but if she does, it should be well 
done, so that the traces of her pen should not be like 
the fantastic wanderings of a beetle. It is a prejudice 
I have, and affects me in the same way as if I should 
see a marquise draw out of her pocket a coarse, cotton 
handkerchief, or use patchouly as a perfume. 

But, as it was hardly the time for philosophical re- 
flections, and the dog, with his neck stretched out, was 
still waiting for his answer, I resolved to confess frankly 
that I was hungry, and that my strongest wish at that 
moment was to have something to eat. This was not 
sentimental— far from it ; but to a woman who does not 
know how to write ! Then, as I bent down to tie the 
ribbon to the collar, the dog made a movement, and, 
with the touch of his shoulder, threw the table, ink- 
stand, and all the rest on the floor. Rather abashed, I 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


91 

added a postscript to announce the misfortune, and a 
minute after my young guardian of last night entered. 

She was dressed this time like everybody else, and, 
with her hair coiled high, she resembled in such a 
ridiculous way all other women, that she made me think 
of a portrait by Velasquez, that had been restored by 
replacing a child’s head with that of an honest Bur- 
gundian peasant-woman. Is it possible to have under 
one’s hand so much local coloring and not to make use 
of it ? 

Quite indifferent to the effect she produced on me, 
she repaired the disorder without speaking. She 
picked up the table, wiped the ink, and rubbed her 
cloth over the floor with the point of her foot. 

I tried at first to excuse myself very humbly, but at 
the first word she stopped me, saying : “ Oh, do not 
worry ; I do not mind spots in the least ! ” so I let her 
alone. After that she went to see about food, and I was 
left to my thoughts. 

My dear fellow, this young girl already displeases 
me very decidedly. Her appearance is of a piece with 
her writing, and this last phrase decided me. To me, 
also, spots are nothing, and I have seen rivulets of ink 
spilled, looking calmly on ; but from her the words 
shocked me. 

The thing that I dislike above all is to find in an- 
other, especially in a woman, my own defects. I know 
my own face, and, if I want to see it, I have only to 
look in the glass ; and I do not wish to see other faces 
that are the same. I should like to change its ugliness, 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


9 2 

and my huge nose appears to better advantage beside 
small ones than in the vicinity of those that are like it. 

On her return, she began serving the meal which the 
old servant had brought, moving about with a vivacity 
full of good intentions, but with such awkwardness, 
that, after the first few minutes, I dared not even ask 
for bread. She just escaped cutting off the end of her 
thumb with the slice, the dishes rattled under her 
fingers, and you have never seen anything less feminine 
than this young girl. 

“ Timidity,” you will say— “ it was your green eyes 
which disturbed her.” Do you think so? Was it my 
fault also about the coffee, which I took from her hands 
and drank to the last drop ? 

Ah ! my friend, every man has his bitter cup, which 
he must drain in this world, without speaking of those 
which purgatory has in store for him. I know it, and I 
am resigned ; but mine was intolerably bitter that day ! 

From my bed I watched Mademoiselle d’Erlange 
squatting down before the hearth, preparing the mixt- 
ure with the confidence of knowledge, and, though it 
seemed to me hardly as it ought to be, my own inex- 
perience kept me from making remarks, at least until I 
should have tasted it. But then ! 

Have you any remembrance of cream that has 
turned, when you were a child, which made you weep 
with disappointment ? And can you still see something 
thick and cloudy, with little specks of unknown origin 
swimming about in it and multiplying? My poor 
Jacques, it was a thing like that which was offered to 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


93 


me. I confess I was vexed, and the perfume of the 
mocha, which passed under my nose in the form of 
smoke, made me scowl. 

I can hear you pitying the culprit and abusing me 
for my bad humor. Oh, my dear fellow, you can keep 
your pity ; her embarrassment was not great, I assure 
you, and I even believe that, if she had had the slight- 
est encouragement, she would have laughed outright. 

But, in reality, I did not find it in the least funny ; I 
did not move, and, possessed with the idea of making it 
all right, she imagined an expedient which pleased her 
so much that she communicated it to me with an ex- 
clamation of pleasure. She ran to a wardrobe, pulled 
out a pocket-handkerchief, and strained me a cup of her 
horrible mixture in a corner of the muslin, which she 
held up delicately. I acknowledge it was clean, but you 
must confess that this strainer was of a doubtful charac- 
ter, and not exactly fitted to calm my susceptibilities. 

I drank it ! What would you have done? But the 
bitter taste, with an after-flavor of lavender and verbena, 
or what not, taken from the cambric, was atrocious ! 

Then, with the pleasing sentiment of duty done, she 
placed herself in her huge arm-chair, her head reaching 
hardly half-way up the back, and I tried to make her 
talk. 

Do you want to hear the number of her attachments, 
in their order ? She makes no mystery about it : her 
old nurse, her dog, and that is all ; for her aunt only 
comes in as twenty-fifth to fill up — and scarcely that ! 

As for my accident, she stated her sentiments at 


94 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


once, without coaxing. It amuses her — oh ! it amuses 
her, do you hear ? She has never seen anything funnier 
than this adventure ! There is satisfaction in thinking 
that it diverts some one, if not me ! 

Starting from this point, our cordiality did not in- 
crease, as you will understand, when the duenna came 
in very fortunately to relieve our embarrassment. Made- 
moiselle d’Erlange flew off, and I — who unfortunately 
could not — I settled myself on my pillows, resolved to 
hold on to Benoite, as she was there, and not to let her 
go until I had got out of her old head everything that 
was in it. 

Only, our two wills were on this point diametrically 
opposed, and she seemed as decided to keep silent as I 
to make her speak ; so that for a good quarter of an hour 
we pla} T ed at cross-purposes, she diverging, and I bring- 
ing her back to the point, only to see her slip once more 
out of my fingers, until I conquered the position by a 
ruse. 

My friend, if you still dare to defend the delicate 
little fingers which handle the porcelain so gently, and 
which know how to make such delicious coffee, learn 
that it is their mark that I bear on my forehead, and my 
antipathy to Mademoiselle d’Erlange was a premonition. 

Bad intention, I do not say, but rather too rash an 
act you will acknowledge, I think, and above all when 
you know the nature of the missile employed. It is 
heavy, massive, and a noble metal. Do you guess? 
Certainly you can not, and if you tried a hundred times 
you would not be further advanced. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


95 


Do you see that image of St. Joseph almost hidden 
in the corner of my room, as if he wanted to sink into 
the wall? It is a beautiful 
thing, well finished, chiseled 
in solid silver, which I should 
without hesitation attribute to 
the Italian school, and which 
might even be signed Cellini, 
so exquisite is the work. It 
is, however, the instrument of 
my misfortune. 

In order that you may un- 
derstand how it happened, we 
must go back some days, and 
you must imagine Mademoi- 
selle d’Erlange so penetrated 
with the virtues of this saint, 
believing in him so entirely, 
so full of a passionate veneration for him, that she 
passed the best part of each day at his feet ! 

Then suddenly, without apparent reason, from morti- 
fication or fatigue, a difficulty arose between them, and 
the young suppliant, passing from one feeling to another, 
became as ardent in resentment as she had been humble 
in humility, and finally, in an access of impious rage, cast 
the once revered statuette ignominiously out of doors. 

Not to pray to it any more was too little. The old 
idolaters are not the only ones who like to burn what 
they have adored ; and, besides, as the good Benoite 
told me, sighing, “ The child never uses half-measures.” 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


96 

So far, there is nothing to be said against this way of 
acting. 1 do not know the wrongs of the young rebel ; 
it was her right, perhaps, and in every case it was 
strictly her own affair. But the worst is that, while 
this little comedy was being acted, in the usual way in 
this world, it was the innocent who was destined to suffer 
for the guilty. 

You have guessed, my friend: this time the lamb of 
the fable was to be I, and the hour when my unfortu- 
nate reveries of which I have told you led me along 
that road, was also the one in which Mademoiselle 
d’Erlange sent the poor saint flying over the country, 
committing thus the double sin of attempting the life 
of a fellow-being, and inflicting the most mortifying 
treatment on an object belonging to the Church. 

Without ceremony, and forgetting its sacred and 
pacific character, it cut open my forehead with the skill 
of a professional bomb. So this is how, without a crime 
with which society or the gods can reproach me, I have 
narrowly escaped death, and am still threatened with a 
stiff knee — or at least a damaged one — and all because a 
young person and a silver statuette had a difference to 
settle ! 

What do you think now of Mademoiselle d’Erlange? 
Can you not see the claws under her rosy nails, and will 
you be quite tranquil about me during the hours when 
she is alone to watch with me ? Iam awaiting with more 
curiosity than I can tell you the explanation which must 
certainly take place between us on this subject. Will 
this proud Amazon show confusion? Nothing is more 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


9 7 

uncertain, and I am reserving all my decision for the 
attempt to come out of it with the honors of war. 

I am certainly her victim ! She must not forget that ; 
and, if she make slight of the thing, I will tear off my 
bandage like the heroes in the pages of Anne Radcliffe, 
and show her my gaping wound ! 


March 29th. 

Benoite has spoken. Monsieur Pierre knows all ! 
Heavens ! what shall I say, and how shall I dare to see 
him ? I have kept on saying these things to myself since 
yesterday, without ever finding a solution. 

In a certain sense, I am not sorry that he knows. 
Doubtful situations have always been odious to me, and 
I remember the time when as a child I asked my aunt 
to give me “ two slaps at once ” rather than the punish- 
ment she was reserving for me in the evening. Since 
now I am really to blame, I should not be sorry to know 
at once what it is to be. But how to present myself, 
and with what words to begin ? I could not think, or, 
at least, what I had in my head escaped as soon as I ap- 
proached the fatal door. 

Ten times in the afternoon I came so near that I half 
turned the latch, but each time, seized with fear at the 
last moment, I fled before I had opened the door. It 
seemed to me that all my ideas stayed behind in the 
library, which I have taken for my room lately, for, as soon 
as I go back there, words crowd upon me, I gesticulate 
nobly, and the phrases most fit to move a haughty heart 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


98 

come to my lips. I advance thus to a divan, where I 
suppose Monsieur de Civreuse to be extended, so as to 
make the rehearsal realistic, and, seizing the corner of a 
cushion as I propose to do with his hand — 

“ Sir,” I say, in a tremulous voice, “ pardon me, I 
beg you ! I have committed a foolish act which will 
cause me remorse forever, and of which I can not think 
even now without terror. See how unhappy I am, and 
tell me, I beg you, that you are not too angry with me ! 
Until then I can not pardon myself, and I hate not to be 
at peace with myself, for the reproaches which I suffer 
are more bitter than anything you can imagine.” 

The cushion draws my hand toward it, kisses court- 
eously the tips of my fingers, and gives me absolution. 

Full of my subject I started, but, in going out of the 
door, my discourse became slightly uncertain ; in pass- 
ing through the hall it was half gone. The rest followed 
quickly, so that I arrived at the decisive spot with empty 
hands. 

Then I returned with a bound, and, by a kind of sor- 
cery, my ideas came back of themselves on my way, 
rising from the floor, coming from the wood-work, and 
resuming their place, so that, when I arrived at the sym- 
bolical divan, I had reconquered my composure, and 
was ready to move him by other arguments, like the 
first, only more persuasive. 

But I had to make an end of it; it was getting late, and, 
as I could not keep Monsieur de Civreuse in the dark, I 
had to take in his lamp. It was evident that so long as 
I reflected I should keep on making the same ridiculous 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


99 


attempts, and the only thing to do was to take myself by 
surprise. 

So, with my head down, like something that has been 
thrown, I went in and walked straight to the bed, trust- 
ing to my star to find a lucky phrase to begin with, and 
I think I was- just going to find it. 

But Monsieur de Civreuse, after bowing to me, be 
gan to look behind me in the back of the room with such 
singular persistency, bending over to see better, keeping 
his eye obstinately fixed on the door, that in spite of my 
preoccupation I turned, possessed with the idea that I 
had dragged in some absurd thing on my dress. There 
was nothing at all, and, as I looked surprised — 

“ I thought you were pursued, mademoiselle,” he 
said, tranquilly. 

Then he put his head- back on his pillow with a gest- 
ure of relief, letting his eyelid fall with an air of being 
so much at his ease, that a bolder person than I am might 
have lost heart, I think. Standing up, motionless, with 
an evident look of perplexity, beginning words which I 
could not finish, holding my lamp in my hand, which I 
forgot to put down, I felt terribly awkward, and would 
have given much if I could have assumed the superb 
attitude of Monsieur de Civreuse, or, at least, have known 
what to do with my hands and feet, which had never 
seemed so much in my way. 

As for him, he leaned back with the majestic non- 
chalance of a Roman emperor, having no awkward 
movement to fear in his comfortable position, and in- 
solently making the most of all his advantages. 


IOO 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


The thing could not go on long like this without be- 
coming ridiculous ; besides, his provoking coolness stung 
me like a lash. Since he would not help me, so much 
the worse ; I would speak straight out as best I could, 
and explain things to him just as they were. 

I did it at once. I advanced another step, and put 
my lamp on the table. 

“ Here is your lamp,” I began rapidly — that was the 
very ingenious way in which I began — “ and I beg you 
to accept my sincere regrets for the deplorable accident 
from which you are still suffering ; but, really, it was 
not my fault.” 

“ Really, I do not think any one can accuse me of it 
either,” he said, quietly raising his head and looking at 
me. 

“ I do not say so,” I stammered, losing countenance. 
And, as he nodded his head in a manner which signified, 
“Well, this is lucky,” I resumed, interrupting myself 
quickly, “ That is to say, I know very well it is my 
fault, but what I mean to say is, that I did not do it on 
purpose.” 

“ Mademoiselle, I am sure of it,” he answered, with a 
sarcastic smile. 

“ For really,” I continued, becoming animated, “ how 
could I know that there was any one there? That road 
belongs to us, and usually no one passes.” 

“ Certainly,” he replied, with the same phlegm, “ it 
was I who was in the wrong place, and, from the mo- 
ment that I was on your land, you were quite in your 
right. Grand seigneurs are rulers on their own estates, 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


IOI 


and have the liberty to settle their quarrels as they like 
without warning. It is the business of those who pass 
to look about them, and protect themselves.” 

“Oh, sir,” I exclaimed, “you make me say stupid 
things that you know very well I do not think, and you 
answer my request for pardon very maliciously.” 

And as I felt that the tears were coming in spite of 
all my efforts, I was going to escape, when he stopped 
me with a gesture, forgetting this time his insupportable 
coldness. 

“ Mademoiselle, it is 1 who beg your pardon now. 

I am brutal, and I should like to beat myself for having 
made the nurse, who has taken such 
good care of me, weep. Will you 
forgive me ? ” 

But it is one thing to make tears 
flow, and another to stop them. I 
smiled. I answered, “Yes, yes,” with 
my head ; but the flow had begun, 
and had to have its course. I bit my 
lips in vain ; pressed my handker- 
chief, rolled up into a ball, in my 
eyes, and with all my trying I resem- 
bled a fountain. 

From time to time Monsieur de Civreuse repeated 
his excuses, and really, at the bottom of my heart, I was 
not sorry to see in that great icy eye a little anxiety 
and embarrassment. After all the trouble he had given 
me for a fortnight, it was only just. However, I was 
not malicious. I calmed myself as soon as I could, for 



102 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


I saw very well that the scene embarrassed him, and, as 
soon as I found my voice, we both began at the same 
time — 

“ So you are not angry with me ? ” 

“ Do you really forgive me ? ” 

I held out my hand to him, taking up my pro- 
gramme where I had left it ; only he contented himself 
with pressing it gently, and he added, smiling, but this 
time without bitterness : 

“ So, then, it is a complete amnesty, even for him, is 
it not ? ” 

And he pointed with his finger at my unfortunate 
statuette of Saint Joseph, which was back again, I know 
not by what miracle, in one of the corners of my room. 

The color mounted to my eyes, augmenting the heat 
of my face, which was already burning, while I was 
sure my nose was swollen and deplorably shiny ; and 
as I did not answer, Monsieur de Civreuse was afraid 
that I would begin to cry again, and so added, hur- 
riedly : 

“ You may make yourself easy, mademoiselle. I 
know nothing of the nature of your wrongs ; I only 
know the punishment, but not its cause.” 

“ I am sure of that,” I answered ; “ one would have 
had to read inside my head for that. I have told no 
one.” 

He did not insist, and I went to bathe my eyes. 

The doctor, who has just left, is delighted with the 
forehead of his patient. He says it is getting well with 
the rapidity of a miracle ; but as to the knee, he told 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


103 


me in confidence that it is no better yet, and that time, 
and keeping it perfectly still, are the only things which 
can completely cure it. Please heaven that Monsieur 
de Civreuse may consent to swallow these two bitter 
draughts ! 

As for me, it is with a relief which I can not express 
that I now stay with my patient. There is no longer a 
painful explanation to look forward to, and although his 
temper is not yet sensibly softened, I feel myself more 
at ease with him. 

He remains slightly melancholy, always cold, with a 
tendency to irony which is constantly showing itself. 

“ I was born bad-tempered,” he said to me just now, 
“ and as no one thought of pulling up this weed in my 
spring-time, it is now a small oak, to which even I pay 
no more attention.” 

“ And what do your friends say of it ? ” I asked. 

“ They generally get used to it, or, when they are 
tired of it, they prune it a little.” 

“ I think they are very good,” I could not help say- 
ing ; “ in their places I should look for another shade 
rather than this small oak, where one does not seem to 
me safe.” 

He drew up his eyebrows. It is his way, when he is 
not pleased and yet does not wish to say so, and I have 
discovered that it means in words, “ Go away !” which 
I have done. 

Finally, I am like his friends, and think that the 
branches of his oak have particular need of pruning, 
and that it has grown up crooked but vigorous. 


104 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


Pierre to Jacques. 

My friend, do you know any argument at once more 
commonplace and more irresistible than tears? It is as 
old as sin ; everybody uses it ; everybody knows, too, 
the simplicity of the proceeding, and, notwithstanding all 
this, everybody is moved by it in spite of himself. Eve 
obtained her first pardon and sealed her first reconcilia- 
tion with this beneficent liquid, and Mademoiselle d’Er- 
lange — be it said without comparison — has used it so 
well, just now, that not only is peace signed between 
us, but it was I who begged for mercy. 

Can you imagine a position at once more ridiculous 
and more embarrassing than that of a man who makes a 
woman cry, when the woman is a complete stranger to 
him? With her eyes in her handkerchief, her broken 
voice, her explanations broken by deep sighs — which he 
hears in fragments — he feels like an executioner, and he 
does not know how to act. To look at her is indiscreet. 
To turn away his head is cynical, for that seems to say, 
“ What does it matter to me ? ” and he can only confess 
himself a miserable sinner, and beg pardon humbly. 

And then, I do not know if you are like me, but 
things that are slightly known or rarely experienced 
make a deeper impression. If I hear of broken bones 
and cuts, I know what they are. I have had them. But 
her tears, the impetuous, uninterrupted flood, resembled 
so little the tears which I have ever shed — rare tears, 
and always concealed— that I watched them with a 
vague fear of the unknown, asking myself when and 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


105 


how it would end, and also what would happen to 
Mademoiselle d’Erlange afterward, and if she was not 
in danger of melting entirely, like a naiad who feeds a 
living spring. So I was ready for any capitulation, and 
I considered myself most fortunate to barter grievance 
for grievance, and to give my pardon for that which 
she vouchsafed me. 

There is only this poor saint whom she will not hear 
of forgiving. I tried to intercede for him, but the facts 
must have been very serious, for she remained unmoved, 
and I dared not risk disturbing our peace — so recent 
and so dearly bought — by too much zeal. 

And I, who considered myself master of the situa- 
tion, quite superior in my just anger to this scatter-brain, 
who arranged so well in my own mind all the truths 
that I wished to tell her, and which it would be good 
for her to hear once! You laugh — traitor! It is very 
misplaced, I assure you, and I was never more in- 
disposed to acknowledge you in the right. Besides, 
our peace is at best but an armistice. We are agreed 
on one point, but only on one — we are not to speak 
of the cause which has procured us the pleasure of the 
t$te-a-t$te of a month, which I groan to think of ; and, 
besides, causes of dissension are not wanting, I assure 
you. 

Think of the most dissimilar things in the world — 
black and white, fire and water, two horses galloping in 
a circle in opposite directions, so as to knock against 
each other in every round — and you have us in the 
large sculptured chamber, where I am being mended 


io6 


THE STORY CF COLETTE. 


like the most common of knickknacks, and waiting- to 
dry. 

But no, my definition is bad. Do not read absolute 
dissimilarity, for she resembles me, my dear fellow, and 
it is that which is hateful to me, as I have already told 
you ! She wears a dress, is adorned with a head of hair 
which I could only have had in the Merovingian age, is 
endowed with her first freshness of candor and inno- 
cence, which also is not mine; but, except this, we are 
as twin brothers. Yet, for a woman, you will agree, 
there could be a better model than your friend, and she 
would gain in grace and charm what she would lose in 
similitude. Of all types, that of “ good fellow ” is the 
one I have always disliked the most. I should like her 
better dreamy, coquettish, prudish, fanciful, anything 
that would give me a varied study during my seclusion, 
rather than this jovial and capricious self-confidence 
which shows itself in the classical hand-shake, which the 
nervous hands and pointed elbows of the daughters of 
Albion have imported for us, and which is the thing I 
can least easily pardon them — always excepting their 
ugliness. Just now, all in tears, she was more feminine. 
But you must not understand that at that moment I was 
much more amused, nor that 1 was precisely at my ease ; 
but I like the respect for old usages, and I think young 
girls should be timid, submissive, a little cowardly, per- 
haps imaginative, an octave higher than we are, like the 
difference between the masculine and feminine voice. 

After all, perhaps I shall divert myself all the better. 
I set out in search of new countries, strange types, origi- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


107 


nal characters to study, yet it is said that what French- 
men know the least is France ! Let us study France, 
since we are in it, and you must 
receive my traveler’s notes with 
the same good-will as if they 
came to you from the banks of 



the sacred Ganges, or the not 
less sacred heights of the Hima- 
layas. They will have at least 
the merit of being more recent 
than after a longer journey ; and 
when one thinks of all the charm- 
ing things Bernardin de St.. Pierre 
discovered in a simple straw- 
berry-leaf, I must be very stupid 
if I can not do as much for the 
greater space in which I am. 


But I wander from my sub- 
ject. I browse on philosophi- 
cal questions, like a simple donkey on the bushes 
by the road, and the equipage in which I am taking 
you is a little shaken by it, I think. You want a true 
history, do you not? We were at the tears of Made- 
moiselle d’Erlange, and I am sure you think that with a 
word I would stop them, as I confess I made them burst 
forth. I would make excuses, it would be over, and we 
should then be better friends than ever. 

O my friend, God forbid that you should ever 
provoke a crisis which you find yourself unable to con- 
trol in a moment, for it is terrible ! One feels one’s 


IQ g THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

self helpless before an overwhelming torrent, it is said, 
because it is something which one can not master. 
What will you say to me, then, of a young girl’s tears ? 
Can dikes be made against them? I became gentle — 
humble, in truth ; I gave up everything, and the stream 
still flowed, and it was marvelous to see the same little 
handkerchief, no bigger than the palm of my hand, 
turned over and over, kneaded on all sides, and yet 
sufficient for the work ! All folded up, it just filled the 
hollow of her eye; so exactly, in fact, that she had to 
dry one eye after the other, but it was done so quickly 
that one could hardly see the one which was uncovered ; 
and, in spite of my embarrassment, I could not help 
watching curiously this admirable dexterity. 

1 should say, however, that Mademoiselle d’Erlange 
did not abuse her position. She calmed herself as soon 
as she could, held out her hand without ill-feeling, and 
at my request sat down by me, without running away 
as she evidently wanted to do. 

I had now to retrieve myself, and I felt that my 
moment of blundering had to be paid for by great 
amiability, I had to give myself the trouble to talk, to 
amuse her, to take away the too great violence of my 
brutality, and I think I did not come out of it badly. 

At the beginning, her words were interrupted by 
deep sighs — real sighs, like those of a child in distress — 
and a tear would come from time to time and require 
the help of the famous handkerchief ; but little by little 
she became animated, so much so that at the end of a 
few minutes 1 could hardly follow her. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


IO9 

It seems to be a real pleasure to her to talk ; she 
does it with vivacity, without much connection, as if 
it were simply a healthy gymnastic exercise for her 
tongue. Questions, reflections, facts, rush out in cu- 
rious confusion: she takes her ideas from the heap, 
without sorting them, and scatters them as one scatters 
seed to the .sparrows. “Hop! hop! — catch who can!” 
I will bet a good deal that the parable of the sower in 
the Bible has never occupied her attention much, and 
that what is lost in the thorns of the road or among the 
rocks is one of the last things she thinks about. 

Do not imagine, however, that it is vulgar gossip ; 
her inexhaustible animation is rather the result of su- 
perabundant vitality ; and if I am not deceived, she 
thus spends her forces because she has nothing else to 
do, though she gives herself occupation, I assure you ! 
While she talks, she goes and comes, plays with her 
dog, arranges and disarranges the fire twenty times in 
an hour, so that she half puts it out and fills the room 
with smoke. Then she opens the windows, excusing 
herself, and builds up a fire, the flames of which dart 
so high that they have to be put out with a pail of 
water to keep us from a greater misfortune. 

Sitting, she brings up her two feet under her in the 
Turkish fashion — like her coffee — and balances her 
body, as she talks, in a way most dangerous for her 
equilibrium, which, to be just, she keeps marvelously. 

I got out of breath merely by looking at her. 

“ You are feverish,” my doctor said to me a little 
later ; “ what is the matter ? Have we given you 


IO 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


hearty food too soon, and must we go back to dosing 
you with sick-man’s broth ? ” 

“ It would be better to dose this will-o’-the wisp,” I 
felt like saying. 

But, to consider the whole question, Jacques, you 
must remember that fourteen hours a day of solitude 
is a great deal when one is incapable of moving. I 
must not complain too much of distractions. 

Our very varied conversation has given me some 
ideas of the people and things around us. 

The chateau, of which I have perhaps spoken a 
little too grandly, is not exactly what I expected it 


to be, and is 
like stage scen- 
ery, which looks 
very different- 
ly seen from be- 
fore and behind. 
Its grandeur 
dates from Louis 
XIII and its 
downfall from 
the Revolution ; 
which proves, as 
M. Prudhomme 



t 


would tell you, that happiness is more lasting in this 
world than misfortune, contrary to the general opin- 
ion, and which signifies simply that one hundred years 
is the extreme limit during which walls consent to 
stand without help. Whatever the reason may be, an 


THE STORY OF COLETTE , 


III 

entire wing, a belfry, and two towers have already 
disappeared from this noble building. 

They fell easily, like well-bred towers, as people who 
are tired of standing sit on the floor for want of a 
better place. Then, the ivy which they dragged down 
got green again ; wild grasses and wild flowers, see- 
ing that no one thought of rooting them up, began to 
bloom ; and the next year birds made their nests there, 
finding good shelter in such a pleasant wilderness. 

“ A story of old walls,” you will tell me ; “ I know 
your ruin before you describe it ; these chateaux in de- 
cay all resemble one another.” 

And do the ways in which owners act resemble one 
another also ? Do you think that you have seen many 
places where they behave as they do at Erlange under 
these circumstances? 

When the crevices become too numerous, and the 
cracks make the walls look like people who are at 
their last gasp, and the stones yield too much to 
the wind, each member of the family takes her belong- 
ings, everything that can be moved without too much 
trouble, and philosophically transports herself and her 
baggage to another more hospitable portion still stand- 
ing. 

The first tempest gets the better of the abandoned 
tenement : it sinks, and becomes the palace of bats and 
owls ; while the emigrants remake their nests, accom- 
modating themselves to their new quarters, finding out 
advantages and disadvantages, no more affected by the 
change than a tribe of ancient Gauls that moved its 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 12 

camp in the morning to find a new country and new 
game at evening ! 

They have thus successively left the north tower for 
the south tower, and the right wing for the center ; and 
if the center gives way in its turn — and with these 
snows, which crush everything, one must be prepared — 
there will remain the left wing, which was more re- 
cently repaired, with one or two towers, besides the 
chapel and the servants’ rooms. 

This gives sufficient shelter for Mademoiselle d’Er- 
lange and her pets, which is likely to endure, and of 
course for the lifetime of the mysterious aunt, with 
whom I am still unacquainted, and whom I sometimes 
think a myth. 

All this is certainly the highest philosophy, if it is 
not madness, and yet it is the fact. Mademoiselle d’Er- 
lange even seems to consider the state of affairs quite of 
course. To hear her, one would think that she was 
speaking of the most insignificant change, like the ne- 
cessity of changing one’s seat in a garden when the sun 
turns the corner of your sheltering tree, or other simi- 
lar protection. 

“ But when the house was falling, what would you 
have done?” she asked me, seeing me open my eyes; 
“ would you have stayed where you were ? ” 

“ No, but I would have restored it,” I answered. 

“ With whom ? With Benoite and me as masons, 
and Frangoise to mix the plaster with her feet ? ” 

“ Who is Frangoise? ” 

“ My mare — a good old beast, who knocks with her 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


113 

foot on the stable-door when she wants to go in. I 
will show her to you some day. She is my third af- 
fection.” 

“ But do you not think,” I said, “ that it is a pity to 
let a fine building like this go to pieces, and does your 
aunt not think so ? ” 

“ Hum ! ” she replied, shrugging her shoulders and 
laughing ironically, “ my aunt is sure that the walls of 
Erlange will outlast her, and as she is certain of a shel- 
ter to the end of her days, what difference do you sup- 
pose the ‘ afterward ’ makes to her? ” 

I dared not insist, as the conversation was becoming 
too personal, and we returned to generalities. My 
young companion told me gayly how she had furnished 
her room, dragging out of all the others what remained 
in them, and even going to the chapel for the prie- 
dieus. 

This is the explanation of the large proportion of 
monachal seats which struck me when I first awoke. 

She calls them odd chairs, and in speaking of them 
she drags one after the other before my bed to show 
them to me. 

“ They are all alike ; there is not much variety,” she 
said, turning them round, “ but they are very pretty 
beside my sofas. Have you seen the figures on my 
sofas?” 

And she set to work dragging one to me, rolling it 
from one end of the room to the other with a frightful 
noise, and pushing it back against the wall in the same 
rapid way. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 14 

From all I can learn, the chateau is dismantled out- 
side and inside, which has set me wondering what band 
of robbers could have thus devastated it. Imprudence 
and carelessness can not alone have done it, for years do 
not destroy all the furniture of a chateau without the 
aid of some misfortune. This idea troubled me; for in 
such a case my presence would be a heavy expense to 
my hostesses, and I had decided to consult the doctor, 
when Mademoiselle d’Erlange took the bull by the horns, 
reading my thought with marvelous insight, and trans- 
lating it with great accuracy. 

“ Now you are full of anxiety because we are not so 
rich as you thought we were ! ” she exclaimed. “ Re- 
assure yourself ! If the tables and chairs necessary to 
refurnish the house do not grow at Erlange, we have 
plenty of vegetables, without counting chickens and 
ducks ; and as my aunt, who cares a great deal about 
her dear self, always finds means to provide, it is evi- 
dent that she has not reached the bottom of her stock- 
ing, and that famine does not threaten us yet. You 
must remember, too, that it is wrong to worry about it, 
for it is certainly not your fault that you are here, and 
it is everywhere the custom for people to feed their 
prisoners.” 

This frank explanation put me at my ease, and I had 
only to apologize for having deprived Mademoiselle 
d’Erlange of her room, and to ask as a favor to be 
taken somewhere else. But she refused, telling me 
that “ somewhere else ” was a pretentious phrase here, 
and besides that she wished to keep me in the place 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


”5 

where the crime was committed, so as to make a sort 
of expiatory chapel of it. 

All this made me understand better a strange feature 
which struck me in the beginning, about the inequalities 
of the table-service, and now I can explain the medley 
of the Sevres china, Venetian glass in which my wine 
looks like liquefied gold, massive silver which 1 do not 
like to see Mademoiselle d’Erlange handle too near me, 
and table-cloths of coarse unbleached linen, with a thir- 
teen-sou knife. 

Yesterday I was struggling with a knife, tearing my 
meat like a puppy, using the blade and the back in turn 
without success, and nearly losing my patience. 

“It cuts badly, does it not?” said Mademoiselle 
d’Erlange, who looked at me delighted, “and you are 
getting angry. Wait — I have something which will 
help you do it.” 

She ran to a drawer, and triumphantly brought me 
back a little dagger in an ivory sheath, which she drew 
out quickly, the steel flashing with a blue light, and all 
with such vivacity that I shuddered. 

“ There,” she said ; “ it cuts perfectly — I always use 
it for my pens. Will you have it ? ” 

Such is my table-service, my friend ; and now you 
have a good enough idea of my shelter, also of the per- 
sons about me : the phantom aunt, my doctor, “ One,” 
and finally Mademoiselle Colette, for that is the name 
of Mademoiselle d’Erlange, who kindly informed me of 
the fact, as also of the reflections which suggested them- 
selves to her. 


n6 THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

“ A queer name, is it not ? ” said she, “ Col — Colette. 
Wh}^ not Colerette ? What does it mean, and where can 
it have come from ? ” 

“ A saint of the calendar, I suppose — ” 

“ Possibly ; I never thought of that ! I thought it 
had been invented for me. Do you know her, then, this 
Saint Colette ? Perhaps you have prayed to her against 
toothache ? It appears that it is a sure thing, and that 
one is certain of being cured in addressing one’s self to 
her!” 

“ I confess I have not,” I replied ; “ for one reason, 
my teeth have got on very well by themselves, up to 
the present time, and, for another, your want of success 
would disgust me forever with nine days’ prayers, for I 
should never be conceited enough to suppose I could 
succeed where you had failed so completely.” 

She blushed to her fingers’ ends, turning away her 
head, but in a moment she resumed, though in a lower 
tone : 

“ Oh, what I wanted was very difficult ; that is the 
reason.” 

She was evidently afraid of discouraging me by her 
want of success, and of leading me into temptation or 
revolt; so, half for her frankness, half because I feared I 
might have wounded her, I added in conclusion : 

“ Certainly one should never despair of anything ; 
perhaps what you asked for is nearer than you think.” 

As to Saint Colette, I believe only very moderately in 
her virtues, this is the truth ; but if you can hear of one of 
the celestial beings who presides over the healing of 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. TI y 

broken bones, burn a candle before him, my friend, for 
unfortunately I do not get any better. 


March 28th , 

Lately an idea has come to me, and it is in vain that 
I shrug my shoulders in its face to show that I think it 
absurd ; it stays there, and is so firmly fixed that I 
can think of nothing else. 

But it is so foolish that, in order to write it, I shut 
and bolt my door, and turn over two pages, so as to put 
the ridiculous idea by itself. 

By much thinking of my last adventure, of the vio- 
lent manner in which I treated my poor saint, of my 
anger, and the result of it, finally of the day when M. de 
Civreuse was brought into Erlange, I asked myself — I 
have thought it possible — to speak plainly, I have the 
idea that perhaps, in spite of all, Saint Joseph heard my 
prayer, and that M. de Civreuse is the savior and the 
hero I asked for. 

I know very well that he was not coming to Erlange, 
and that he did not think of me, and that his manner of 
acting at present is anything but gallant. But this co- 
incidence ! I asked for help, and here suddenly into my 
secluded life comes a young man, original, interesting if 
not amiable, and exactly the kind of which heroes are 
made. Is it not really help from heaven ? The ill- 
humor and fury of my aunt are sure proofs of it, and 
her daily attacks show me that she thinks, as I do> that 
the liberator of Colette has come. 


xxg THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

When I make all sorts of excuses to my poor statue, 
which I have taken back, it seems to me that its eye 
smiles on me as it did before, and that it says to me, 
“ You see very well that you despaired too soon, and that 
I did not deceive you in the least ! ” The next minute I 
say to myself that I am crazy, and the cold face of M. de 
Civreuse comes up before me. He cares for me just as 
much as he does for my dog, and it is easy to see that 
he is exasperated at the fate which keeps him here. 

But if it were his destiny, he had to come, and he 
ought even to be quite satisfied to be damaged as he is 
— otherwise, he might have gone by ! 

Does his appearance exactly resemble my summer 
dreams ? I can hardly remember, for now, when I try 
to recall the picture of my shadowy hero, it is the face 
of Monsieur Pierre which comes up before me, and I do 
not turn back to the first pages of my book to see 
whether I am mistaken or not, for I think he is very 
well as he is. 

His forehead, of which one does not see much now, 
is evidently high and wide ; his hair is chestnut, cut 
short, and his Roman nose is rather too long, it seems 
to me ; his lips are always tightly pressed together, his 
beard is not exactly a beard, neither is it simply a mus- 
tache, and I should very much like to ask him exactly 
what it is called. 

As to the color of his eye — of his eyes, rather, for I 
suppose the other is just like the one I know — it is 
peculiar, neither blue nor gray, and resembles nothing 
so much as the spring-water in which I used to look at 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


XI 9 

myself last year. One secs every color in it, even the 
color of the clouds that seem to pass over it from time 
to time, for the hue changes with his emotions, and 
grows light or dark in an instant. 

His complexion is dark except where a line divides 
the forehead ; from there to the hair the skin is white, 
which looks very queer. One might think that the face 
had been painted all of one tint up to that, and that the 
color had then given out, leaving it as it was. 

His disposition is brusque ; he is not very amiable, 
and he seems like a man so accustomed to do as he likes 
that the wills of other people count for very little with 
him. 

I imagined a tyrant who would tyrannize over all the 
world, but I fancied him softer tow T ard me. 

But, after all, when I have dreamed of all this, I 
realize perfectly the folly there is in such an idea. Prince 
Charming never made himself so little charming to 
please the lady of his heart ! — and am I not obliged to 
perceive that Monsieur de Civreuse resembles a chained 
mastiff, a learned mastiff, a well-educated mastiff, under- 
standing the manners of good society, but who, it is 
evident, does not like his kennel in the least? 

And could I accommodate myself to this severe 
humor ? It seems that as if by some spell all that I do 
and all that I say is exactly what I ought not to do or 
say, and I give the eyebrows of my companion the 
pleasure of constant gymnastic exercise — he is forced to 
raise them so often in the lively astonishment I cause 
him. But one certainly is not to be blamed for every- 
9 


120 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


thing when one has waited eighteen years for her liberty 
and a little happiness. 

On the other hand, Mother Lancien seemed very 
sure of what she said in promising me success, and she 
has seen so much, and I so little ! 


Pierre to Jacques. 

Ah, my friend, how well I knew what you would 
say, and how perfectly your last letter is characteristic 
of you ! 

You take fire, you excite yourself, you build a whole 
romance out of nothing, and send it to me by express, 
even asking me if you are not too late, and if your con- 
gratulations will arrive before or after the ceremony. 

This accident which lays me low on the highway, 
the old chateau into which I am carried insensible, this 
young girl who watches over me night and day, water- 
ing my pillow with her tears — all intoxicate and trans- 
port you ; you see me in love, kneeling at the feet of my 
idol — as much as a man with a broken leg can kneel — 
blessing the bad roads because that solitude in such 
company is a joy, pleased with my sufferings because 
they have given me access to Erlange, and the winter 
because it makes our eagle’s nest inaccessible to the 
envious and jealous. 

Ah, my dear Jacques, I have not your inflammable 
temperament nor your vivid imagination ; and you ought 
to remember that formerly, when we went into society, 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


12 


I had white hair in comparison with your fanciful head 
and wild caprices. 

While you, the insatiable, devoured one or even two 
passions in one evening, falling so violently in love with 
your partners that after the ball you even dreamed of 
marriage, I hardly gave my heart once a week, and I 
have even gone from one Sunday to another, or a fort- 
night, without feeling a heart-beat. 

And now, when I have quarreled with the whole 
human race, with my comrades of the boulevards as well 
as society, when I am satiated with all, you expect me to 
fall in love like a school-boy, and to accept fetters when 
I have just shaken off the last burden! No, no; and if 
you would like the place, Jacques, by the honor of a 
Civreuse, I will give up the whole to you without regret 
— the bed with columns, the plaster moldings, and the 
little blonde into the bargain. 

Have you already forgotten, my poor friend, the two 
years that are just past? Evidently you have, for they 
have been by you devoted to my interests, and with 
your noble delicacy you have considered it a crime to 
remember. Only, it is not the same for me, for there 
are certain things the bitterness of which remains on 
the lips, no matter what one does to drive it away, and 
my experiences are among the number. 

I was so simple-minded, you see, so absurdly confi- 
dent, so convinced of the truth of all I was told ! I had 
thirty intimate friends, and I believed all to be true, all 
devoted and sincere. 

I was warmly welcomed in twenty houses in Paris ; 


122 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


and, believing myself to be received in remembrance of 
my mother, I came and went and acted as though she 
herself had presented me, without the slightest mental 
reservation — the only person, it seems, who was per- 
fectly open and sincere. 

Poor fool! who forgot only one thing: that all the 
attentions belonged to the income of three hundred 
thousand francs, which, as an orphan, was completely at 
my own disposal. 

Then, one morning, the sudden ruin — do you remem- 
ber? My banker — also one of those friends — who had 
put my capital in such doubtful investments that he had 
not even dared consult me before swallowing it up, had 
gone off finally to America, and at once my own posi- 
tion showed itself. 

The telegraph is slow in comparison with the news 
which is carried from mouth to mouth ! Four hours 
after my ruin I had become a very small personage ; 
everybody knew it, and by the end of the week I was 
forgotten. Events follow each other so quickly in 
Paris ! After my affair came the fall of a ministry, a 
private divorce case of which all the papers spread the 
news with all their might — and you can see that the 
wave w T hich overwhelmed me was a broad one. 

All my intimacy in families came to an end. Why 
invite a man who is not a possible suitor? And it was 
only then that I perceived that in each of these exclu- 
sive circles the daughter of the house was invariably 
between eighteen and twenty. 

As to my friends, Jacques, they all behaved perfectly ! 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


123 

There was not one of them who would not cross the 
street or the boulevard to come and take my hand on 
seeing me on the other sidewalk, not one who did not 
express his sympathy. 

“ Poor Civreuse ! What bad luck ! ” 

“ What a wretch D is ! He is expelled from the 

Bourse, you know. By-the-way, will your sale take 
place at the Hotel Drouot ? The season is excellent ; 
that’s a good thing.” 

“ What a descent, poor fellow ! On my word, it is 
enough to disgust a man, and keep him from making 
deposits anywhere but in his mattress ! ” 

It is very nice, all that, and it went to my heart. But 
at the end of two weeks my sale was over, my entresol 
rented, I had no more Mondays — you know my recep- 
tions when I kept open table ? I had given up supping 
at the Cafe Anglais ; and, worse than all, I had crossed 
the Seine ! 

Does any one look for a needle in a hay-stack, or for 
a man who lodges near the Jardin des Plantes? Hon- 
estly, no ! and in less than two weeks I had that absolute 
peace dreamed of by sufferers, but which in a great 
city, where one has lived a happy life, is rather isolation 
than repose. 

My story might have ended there, and a full stop 
put, unless, in a parenthesis, any one wanted to tell my 
struggle with poverty, if by good fortune, besides my 
thirty intimate friends, I had not had another, the thirty- 
first, who, by-the-way, I had never put in the heap with 
the others. 


24 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


More skillful than the rest, this one found out my 
retreat, and, once inside the place, boldly opened m)^ 
strong-box, and, finding it empty as he expected, put 
his arm through mine and carried me off to his home, 
to share his life with him for two whole years. 

And it was not only the offer, friend Jacques — allow 
me to say it for once to your face, since I have the 
chance — it was making it in such a manner, that I ac- 
cepted at once, and that I have lived a parasite with you 
all this time without the slightest hesitation. 

Do not protest ! it was really as a parasite, for you 
know as well as 1 do what is paid for labor to people 
who seek places because they need them, without having 
gone through the administrative routine which is the 
glory of our France. 

I can not remember exactly what it was I gained ; 
but if during these days of trouble I paid the fourth 
part of my rent and my washing, it was because things 
were made cheaper for me, I am sure ! 

What trade could I take up ? While I was only an 
amateur, I was enough of an artist to get my pictures 
into the Salon; but as soon as it was known that I 
needed to sell, I became such a poor dauber that I 
could not get fifty francs for a picture six yards long ! 
As for music, it was not to be spoken of. To play the 
guitar under balconies was charming, but as a professor, 
the only thing I would have needed was pupils. 

The choice remained to me of supernumerary in the 
department of finance — three years of hopes and ambi- 
tious dreams, which one indulges in while thinking of 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


125 


the fifteen hundred francs that will crown this novitiate; 
or diplomacy and consulships, without the possibility of 
buying myself gloves or patent-leather shoes, which are 
the sinews of war in the social struggle ; finally, there 
was journalism. 

Besides this, when one has refused to sell one’s name 
to founders of doubtful companies, tell me, if you can, 
how an honest man can find employment in Paris ? 

I thought of emigrating, and without you it is most 
probable that I would have followed the man who had 
cheated me beyond the seas. 

But you were there, and I 
stayed, with my heart a little 
embittered, I confess, by all I 
had seen, but far from imagin- 
ing the complete change that 
awaited me, and the study from 
life that would enable me to 
complete from life the portrait 
of the human animal. 

After all, it was only neces- 
sary for me to open the pages of La Rochefoucauld, 
and I should have found it all already set forth. But 
who believes La Rochefoucauld before having experi- 
enced for himself his bitter wisdom ? 

In short, I do not need to recall to you the conclu- 
sion of the comedy that came to me one fine morning. 
The wheel had gone round, and Dame Fortune gave me 
with one hand what she had taken with the other. My 
old rascal, richer than ever, died suddenly, leaving 



126 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


neither will nor children, and his petroleum-wells, 
eagerly claimed by all his dupes, gave each one of us 
our rights. Our claims were good, and we were paid 
even the interest on the money — involuntary savings 
which we had made during the past two years. 

Three days after — do you remember, Jacques? — con- 
gratulations and cards rained on us, and I was again in 
possession of all my excellent friends. It was my own 
fault if I could not think it all a bad dream. I was 
awake, and all that I had believed lost came back by the 
same door — gold and friendship. 

But this was too much ! With a little patience, per- 
haps, I could have been deceived. But in twenty -four 
hours to take up life just where I had left it — a break- 
fast accepted two years before that I was reminded of ; 
a waltz of two years back grown yellow on the card 
that they wanted me to recall — it was at once un- 
worthy and grotesque, and I laughed, disgusted at 
heart. 

Simply to refuse everything was too little. I had 
had my eyes opened, had become suspicious, cynical, 
and with malicious pleasure I entered into all combina- 
tions, flattered all hopes, fostered all ambitions, so as to 
make the disappointment greater the day when I should 
snap at once the threads of all the puppets I held in my 
hand. 

Then, sore, weary, forcibly separated from you by 
the illness of your uncle and the secluded winter it ne- 
cessitated for you, finding too feeble all words which 
express hatred of the human race, I was seized with 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 27 

the desire to hear lying in Chinese, in Arabian, in Hin- 
dostani, as I had heard it in French, so as to see for my- 
self whether my country is in advance of its contempo- 
raries, or behind them. 

And this is the moment you choose to speak to me 
of love, of household peace, and the sweet confidence 
which charms its hours ! 

My poor Jacques, you are a great fool, and, if Made- 
moiselle d’Erlange is no worse than other women — 
which is not certain — she is at least like all the rest, 
which is enough to drive me away. 

The proof you use to convince me that I am in love, 
amused me at least : 

“ You say that you are always with her, you speak 
to her, you look at her, you call her a blonde fairy ; be 
frank, Pierre- -confess that you are in love ! ” 

That I may not be with her, have I legs to fly from 
her? Do you want me to turn my head away when I 
speak to her ? And need you see in the fancies of my 
first awakening anything more than the ordinary humor 
of travelers recounting their adventures? 

As for her being blonde, my friend, I can not help 
it ; she is blonde, and I have told you so plainly, think- 
ing no evil. This brings me back to your complaints 
on the subject of Mademoiselle d’Erlange: “ You oblige 
me to imagine her for myself,” you write ; “ except her 
hair, not a bit of description, and you write pages about 
the tapestry, the crumbling towers — in fact, all sorts of 
nonsense. I have the frame, I know it by heart. Put 
the Greuze in it, I beg you.” 


128 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


Here it is, and sincere, with a sincerity which my im- 
partial eyes can guarantee to be true. 

Mademoiselle Colette is rather small, or, if not so re- 
ally, appears so. Does this come from her wonderfully 
slender waist, from her head which is small, like that of 
a Greek statue, or from the quickness and multiplicity 
of her movements ? I can not tell. But it is certain 
that, standing — in the rare moments when she is still — 
she rises up straight and high, like a swaying young 
birch-tree, and I look at her in surprise. Whence has 
she taken that extra height ? 

Then some new idea seizes her : she starts off to the 
right or left with her gliding step, and is only an elf 
who has escaped from her home in the early morning, 
and has come to visit the world. Now you know, my 
friend, elves have neither stature nor age. 

Her nose is short, delicate, and a little saucy ; the 
lower part of the face is pretty, plump like a ripe fruit, 
and her complexion is dark and rich. 

Do not read yellow — we are not in Cambodia ; she 
has a transparent skin, beneath which a ray of sunlight 
is always shining. She has a high forehead, a well- 
made mouth ; and as for her eyes, I tell you frankly 
that they are superb ; you ought to understand this 
properly, but you will take it in the wrong sense, I am 
sure, and you will see flames and passion where there is 
only a conscientious description, as in a passport ; for 
even a passport would note them, I am sure, and put 
them down as “ special marks,” so little do they resem- 
ble what one usually sees. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


I29 

Large, superbly shaped— I may as well give you the 
whole truth this evening, for you would call for it to- 
morrow — these eyes are the deepest black, and from 
their depths come an unceasing flash. 

When the eyelid is lowered, it bears the calm of an 
infant asleep ; raised, it is overpowering, and it seems as 
though some inner light were illuminating the burning 
iris. 

Do black diamonds exist? I do not know, though I 
have often heard them spoken of, but I think I know 
now what they must be like. 

The distinctive characteristic of the look is a mobil- 
ity of expression the variety of which nothing can de- 
scribe, and her general vivacity shows itself in that. 
One really seems to see ideas pass over the face, and 
these great eyes, where thoughts can be read as in a 
book, are ready to betray her. 

Her eyebrows are clear and finely penciled. They 
are drawn with one stroke of the brush. 

Finally, to complete this mixture of grace and mal- 
ice, imagine on the left side above the lip a very small 
dimple, lifting a corner of the mouth so that it only 
smiles on one side at a time, as if on the sly, and giving 
her an inexpressible look of gayety. 

I will not tell you that Mademoiselle Colette has 
the hands and feet of a child, because to me such 
a comparison seems absurd. Would you like to 
finish the portrait of a slender young girl with two 
fat round feet as wide as they are long, and little 
baby hands full of dimples? It makes me shudder! 


30 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


But the D’Erlanges have good blood, and it shows 
itself. 

To sum up, she is an original person, remarkable in 
many ways. I am sure you would admire her im- 
mensely, and that you would write a sonnet to her 
every evening. An artist would be dumb with delight 
before her, only he could not paint her as she is. How- 
ever, some day I will ask her permission to try, and the 
first adventure of my journey shall occupy the first 
page of my album. 

“ Well! what more?” I hear you say. Well, is one 
obliged to fall in love with all that is beautiful? I de- 
scribe her to you as an artist would, as I shall describe 
in three months’ time the palaces, lotus-flowers, and 
almehs — if so it be that almehs exist elsewhere than in 
ballets ; but if you are going to fancy a new romance 
with each new face which I present to you, I shall be 
reduced to writing to you in negro style : 

“ Good little traveler arrived well. Had good pas- 
sage. He not had sea-sickness. Found nice hut to live 
in. Embrace little white brother.” 

One must take the world as it is, my friend ; nobody 
in it is worth much when I have put you and myself on 
one side, for we are too good for the dolls whom we 
know, doting upon equipages, diamonds, and dresses. 
So I have long ago made a vow of celibacy in your 
name and mine. We suffice for each other. Sign the 
contract, and give up romance. 

As for your delicate advice on the subject of Made- 
moiselle Colette, be at ease, moralist; if I am bronze, 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


131 

she is crystal, and I do not think my appearance is 
likely to affect her. And, besides, what do you suppose 
a creature who laughs all day can know of sentiment? 
She is not a woman ; she is a bell always in motion, and 
one might suppose that the life we lead is the most 
amusing thing possible. 

You know what she really is; and just now, when 
Mademoiselle d’Erlange was dancing about the room, 
giving herself up to the little skips and jumps that are 
habitual to her, dusting china and fancy articles, which 
I, following her listlessly with my eye and listening to 
her incessant humming, could not help questioning her 
about — 

“ What is it,” I asked, “ that makes you so gay, and 
why have you always a smile on your lips?” 

“ My good spirits ! ” she answered. “ Do I trouble 
you ? ” 

“ Not at all ; only you astonish me, that is all.” 

“ That is certainly not much like you,” she answered, 
quickly. “ And if I may inquire in my turn, why do 
you never laugh ? ” 

“Just now, on account of my suffering,” I replied, 
dryly. Then, as I was ashamed of this barefaced false- 
hood, and above all of the bad humor which the remem- 
brance of the past gave me, I continued, “ But I sup- 
pose that my humor is generally the opposite of yours.” 

She raised her eyes, which had been hidden, with a 
quick look, and said : 

“ Bad humor, then ? ” 

“Yes, bad, doubtless; at least for those who look 


i3 2 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


upon laughing as the sign of an amiable disposition, and 
not as a grimace or a simple family contortion, confirm- 
ing the opinion of those who think we descend from 
monkeys.” 

“ From monkeys ! ” She drew back with a fright- 
ened gesture, taking in at a rapid glance her hands and 
her whole person. “ I never heard that ! Is it true ? 
How do they know ? ” Then, as she saw me shake my 
head : “ No, no, I am glad,” she continued, before I 
could edge in a word ; “ it would be funny, but so dis- 
gusting. Just think what one would feel on seeing a 
baboon in a cage and saying to one’s self that he ought 
to be venerated as an ancestor ! It is quite enough to 
look like him when one laughs.” 

She ran to a glass, which was hung so high that 
she had to mount on a table, and, seeing her dimple 
come — 

“ It is very possible, after all,” she said, philosophic- 
ally, “ that it is a contortion, but it does one good all the 
same.” And she began laughing more than ever in 
proof of what she had said, and jumped down with the 
bound of a gazelle, without noise or effort. 

As you see, her credulity, like her gayety, is that of 
a child, and she did not get over her amusement for 
some minutes ; then, as I remained perfectly serious, she 
sat down, calmed herself, and resumed in a lower tone : 

“ Perhaps, when one is very much older and wiser, 
one does not care for it any more ; but I have not come 
to that yet.” 

This is too much, Jacques ! Does she take me for a 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


133 


patriarch ? Have you seen that I am getting old, or 
showing signs of age ? 

So you see you need not be uneasy, or think there is 
peril around me. 

I look upon her as a thoughtless child, as I have told 
you ; and she, on her side, considers me so wise and re- 
spectable that she nearly puts me in the same category 
with her grandfather, the baboon. So we are both 
safe. 

And now, my good Jacques, give up inventing 
romances, and sleep without dreams ; my little girl and 
I wish you good-night. 

But look out for yourself, my friend ; you see how 
quickly old age creeps over us, and some fine day it will 
take you unawares. 

You who are so old, so old ! 

They are going to take off my bandage this evening. 
I wonder how my wound will look ? 1 am a little anx- 

ious about it, I confess. 

If the scar is honorable, I will bear it ; but if there 
is a big round hole showing the mark of the rod or 
of the pedestal, 1 will call Mademoiselle Colette and 
her executioner to answer for it. Zounds ! one has 
his small vanities, no matter how old he is ! 

April 12th. 

To say that my intimacy with M. de Civreuse in- 
creases— no, it is just the same to-day as it was yester- 
day. He is just the same now as he was when he first 
came to himself— polite as a king, but peevish as a bear, 


134 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


and sarcastic in proportion, and our slightest conver- 
sations are skirmishes. 

“ Why are you all the time squabbling with your 
gentleman ? ” Benolte said to 
me yesterday ; “ it is not good 
for him, you know.” 

“ What can I do, you dear 
old thing ? ” I answered ; “ he 
sees red and I white. 1 can 
not let him say things that 
are false, and approve just be- 
cause he is ill, when he takes 
up everything I say so quickly. 
It is more than I can bear.” 

It is true that every morn- 
ing and every evening I tell 
myself that if I were different I would please him 
better, and I vow that I will change the next day ; but 
as soon as I am in the room and hear the calm tone in 
which he criticises indifferently men and things, I am 
vexed in spite of myself, and I answer him with all the 
vivacity and indignation that I feel. Or, when I am 
seated before the fire, listening to the melting snow as it 
drips from the broken gutters with a loud noise, and I 
see in the back of the room his dark face, and hear the 
full voice that answers or questions me, in the midst 
of this April sun which glances through the window, 
I feel such bursts of joy that I begin to laugh without 
any reason, and am happy, happy ! 

All this seems absurd to M. de Civreuse, and he 



THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


135 


launches out as he did yesterday, giving himself much 
trouble to prove to me that there is nothing to be proud 
of, that all this gayety is only a family inheritance and 
past education, and that we laugh as monkeys make 
grimaces, and nothing else. 

Was it to frighten me that he said it, or did he half 
believe it ? I never make out more than half the truth 
of the things he speaks of — and if it is true, what can 
I do about it ? Must I deprive myself of the pleasure 
of laughing and moving about, because of an accidental 
or even natural resemblance ; and ought I to stop crack- 
ing nuts with my teeth and jumping over obstacles in 
two or three bounds ? This is much more like the 
monkeys. 

He is a pedant, and we will leave him to his criti- 
cisms, if he goes on like this, for I have forgotten to warn 
him, and to make the condition with my saint in the 
good days when I prayed to him and we understood 
each other about the personal appearance of my libera- 
tor ; but Colette must be loved as she is, with her dog, 
her faults, her laugh, her peculiar ideas, and her sash 
tied wrong side out, or she will return to her own affairs, 
and continue to hunt for stars until she finds a good and 
real one w~hich has not quenched all its rays in water 
before coming to her. 

The truth is, that I am furious — furious not only 
that M. de Civreuse does not find me to his liking, 
and thinks me ugly, foolish, and I do not know what 
besides, but furious, above all, because, in spite of all I 

can do, I can not pay him in his own coin. 

10 


136 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


Sometimes I am ready to run to him and declare 
that, if his opinion of me is not flattering, mine of him 
is just the same ; but I mistrust my tongue. Really, I 
do not think so at all ; and what if my invectives should 
turn to compliments? It is frightful to think of ! 1 do 

not know how one can learn to say in the same tone 
what one thinks and what one does not believe the first 
word of ; and his ear is too quick not to know the dif- 
ference. 

So I am silent, and when I get back to my room, 
with all the doors closed, I make amends by roughly 
questioning my imagination and my heart. 

“ Listen,” I say to them face to face, “ explain your- 
selves. Where do this folly and this infatuation come 
from ? 

“ What has this man done for you ? He is not 
amiable, hardly polite, certainly less handsome than we 
are, and it is plain that we do not suit him. 

“ What effort does he make to conceal it from you ? 
Has he attempted a tender or a gallant word in three 
weeks — even a word of two syllables with as little 
meaning as a poor little sigh ? Does one of you 
know more about it than I do ? Speak ! ” 

Neither of them says much, but their answer, though 
short, is decisive. “ They like him all the same.” 

And that is why I find myself thinking of M. de 
Civreuse a little, often — always, I think — yet without 
being completely satisfied with . him, and without ex- 
actly understanding what he has in the depths of his 
heart. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 37 

Sometimes I wonder, when I see the astonished 
look with which he follows my slightest word, if he 
does not, like me, come from an old chateau in ruins, 
where the ditches and portcullis have kept him until 
now from the sight of women, as my battlements have 
preserved me from all contact with human beings. 

But, in that case, he must have crossed his draw- 
bridge long ago, for his knowledge of human nature, if 
not kindly, is extensive, and he knows many things 
whose very names I am ignorant of. For that reason 
we have ridiculous conversations, during which I an- 
swer without knowing what I say, during which we 
quarrel without my comprehending exactly why, and 
during which 1 am not quite certain that he himself 
knows what he wants. 

Yesterday, for instance, we spoke of people in so- 
ciety. I told him how little I knew outside of Erlange, 
and begged him to tell me what men are, and what they 
do outside of my world. 

Then he began, but described what I asked in such 
a way that I listened stupefied to hear him call all men 
rogues and wretches. Is it a joke, or must one really 
believe it? If so, one would never dare to put one 
foot before the other : there an ambush, here a snare, 
farther on a mine that only waits your pressure to ex- 
plode — these are the usual things, according to him, 
and on the outside of all flowers, smiles, and engaging 
words. 

Is it literally true, and is he speaking of real mines 
full of powder? I do not know; at the beginning I 


138 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


listened quietly, but afterward I could not help pro- 
testing. 

“ In this case,” I cried, “your world is a robbers’ den ! ” 

To which he calmly replied : 

“ It certainly resembles one very much.” 

And when I protested, getting indignant, and asking 
if he were sure of what he said — 

“ I speak of it as a traveler does of the place where 
his watch and purse have been taken from him,” he re- 
plied ; “ that is all.” 

Has he really been robbed ? I could not help ask- 
ing him further if it were so, and without emotion, and 
dryly enough, he answered : 

“ Of my faith and confidence, yes, mademoiselle. 
Do you not think that they are as precious as doubloons 
and a valise ? ” 

Such is my guest, and such are his peculiarities. In 
such a case, what can I answer? I am dumfounded, 
and could understand his conversation more easily if 
he chose to speak Chinese. 

In conclusion, he seems to me to have few illusions. 
If I have been drowning myself in chimeras and dreams 
for eighteen years, I think I have come to the right 
port at last. 

He makes no exceptions — we are no better than 
others ; and as I put my sex in view, hoping for a court- 
eous word for women — 

“ Oh,” he said, u each one has his instincts. Wolves 
bite, tigers fly at you with their claws ! Do you think 
one is much better than another?” 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


139 

Really, it is not right to decide things in this cold- 
blooded way, and I am sure that God, who sees into 
our hearts, does not. 

I was wild to stop him, or at least to embarrass him ; 
so, planting myself directly in front of him, I said : 

“And I, whom you do not know — what am I, 
then ? ” 

“ In bud or in flower,” said he, with a half-smile, “ I 
can not say which, but I am sure that all the instincts 
are there.” 

Really, I could have beaten him ; so, not knowing 
how to prove my point — 

“ And Monsieur Jacques ? ” I asked. 

“Jacques!” and instantly changing his tone — 
“Jacques! he has all the delicacy, all the goodness, all 
the courage on earth united in one man ! ” 

“ Then he is an exception,” said I, ironically. 

“ Precisely ; the exception that confirms the rule.” 

“ What does that mean?” 

“ Oh, in truth, no great thing; it is a thing to say, a 
much-used phrase.” 

“ Very well,” I cried in bad humor; “it should be 
caught and put in a cage ; it has no sense.” 

I knew very well that I spoke foolishly ; but I was 
vexed, I did not know why. 

M. de Civreuse laughed without answering, and, 
beginning where he left off, resumed the praises of his 
friend. He had raised himself in bed, he spoke quickly ; 
it seemed as if he had a second tongue, and for the first 
time I saw him animated. 


140 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


And he was interesting, this Jacques — good and hand- 
some ! Really, I got to liking him. It seemed as though’ 
I were having one of those kingdoms in fairy-land de- 
scribed to me — where everything is perfect, the streams 
of sirup, the rocks of candied sugar, and for hot days a 
gentle shower of rain perfumed 
with vanilla ! So, when Monsieur 
Pierre lay back on his pillow with 
a satisfied air — 

“ Well ! ” I exclaimed with con- 
viction, “ I feel that I should like 
your friend very much.” 

On which he turned sharply, 
and, scowling with his terrible 
eyebrows, looked me full in the 
face. 

“ I beg you to believe, made- 
moiselle,” he said, in his most dis- 
agreeable tone, “ that it would make him proud and 
happy.” 

And I, without reflecting a second, replied in turn, 
not less sharply : 

“ Yes, doubtless ; not every one is liked who wishes 
to be.” 

After that there was silence — a heavy, threatening 
silence. 

Can anything be more singular than such a character, 
and is there any explanation for our conversation ? This 
is a sample of our usual talks, and I do not know why, 
but three times out of four they end in disputes. 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


141 

Still, could I have done otherwise this time ? After 
having borne his gallant classification which put me 
among wolves, if I were not among the tigers, I agreed 
with his praises of his friend, and he was angry at 
once. 

His face turned toward the wall, as indifferent to all 
about him as if he came from the moon, M. de Civreuse 
began to whistle a gay march, drumming an accompani- 
ment with his fingers on the bed-spread. 

I, tired already of this silence, moved about, trying 
to think of some way to begin the conversation again, 
and biting my nails one after the other. But that 
made less noise than the march, and in spite of myself I 
followed the da capo movement, the rhythm of which 
made me beat time without knowing it. “ La — la — la, 
la, la, la ! ” We could not go on like that ; besides, 1 felt 
like doing some mischief. “ The third time it is re- 
peated, I will speak,” I said to myself. And as the third 
came before I had an idea in my head, 1 pulled the cross- 
piece of the table with my foot, and over it went, with 
all that was on it, making a frightful noise ! I had mis- 
calculated the absolute coolness of M. Pierre. He quiet- 
ly finished his tune without moving, and as I murmured 
confusedly — 

“ It is the table — I caught my foot in it — ” 

“ Ah ! ” he said. 

The disaster had to be repaired. A cup full of some- 
thing had been spilled in the fall. 

“ Lick it, good dog,” said I to “ One,” showing him 
the liquid. 


142 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


At last M. de Civreuse stopped, and, after looking at 
what we were doing — 

“ It is the cup which had morphine in it,” he said, 
quietly ; “ he will sleep until to-morrow.” And he pre- 
pared to resume his march ! 

But that was not what I wanted. I replied that he 
was mistaken. The contradiction stopped him at once ; 
he turned to me to prove that I was wrong, and we were 
off again. 

Such is a sample of our intercourse ; the flower of 
gallantry is certainly lacking, but I find great pleasure in 
it. Further, nothing vexes me, nothing wounds me, and 
my angry feelings are so quickly appeased that in the 
evening, when I am back in my own room, and I hunt in 
the ashes for a smoldering spark of bitterness, all my 
remembrances of the day burst up like fire-works, and 
rockets of joy and pleasure come instead. 

Still, I gain nothing — I feel it. But, in the veiled and 
distant future, I dream of revenge, and I laugh to myself 
at the prospect. 

Oh, M. de Civreuse, the day when you fall at my feet, 
how I will leave you there, and how you will regret the 
lost time while you anxiously wait for the smiles you 
might have now ! 

Often, however, he speaks to me of my life at Er- 
lange, of my convent, of my aunt. Yesterday I even 
thought he was going to question me about my studies 
— a little examination in history and geography. I 
should certainly not have shone in it. 

In my turn, I question him about his journey. What 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


143 


fine things he will say and do ! To go everywhere that 
fancy takes him ; to ask nobody’s advice ; to hunt ele- 
phants as easily as here sparrows are taken with bird- 
lime ; to climb mountains on the top of which one has 
one’s head above the clouds and one’s feet hidden in 
them ; to row on the Ganges, a great sacred river — 
which would be like a river of holy water with us — 
where sometimes one meets crocodiles as long as boats, 
and sometimes dead Indians who float down with the 
current to go to paradise, for it is the road, it appears, 
and that the manner of burial there! To travel in a 
palanquin, and to find every morning, in the shells of 
the oysters one is eating for breakfast, pearls enough 
for a necklace — what a dream, what a life ! 

I had only one cry in hearing about it, a silent cry, 
be it understood : “ Oh ! take me with you ! take me 
with you ! As servant, as page, as cook, or as compan- 
ion, as you will ! I would be so easy to get on with, so 
brave, daring, would bear fatigue, and so happy to dine 
off a jackal ! ” But how could I say all this? 

Seeing me listening with rapt attention, my eyes 
shining with enthusiasm, and my hands clasped in my 
emotion — 

“All this seems very fine to you, does it not?” he 
said, with the manner he usually has when I am excited. 

Really, to see and hear him, one would think he had 
lived at least two or three lives, and that his fourth at- 
tempt wearies him, like an old book that one knows by 
heart. He says to himself, “ On such a page I shall find 
this thing, on another that,” and this is the cause of his 


144 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


indifference about everything : he has lost the pleasure 
of the unforeseen. This is the only explanation I can 
find for his morose temper, and sometimes I want to ask 
him, “ Did you do this, and did you think that, in your 
first life ? ” But he would doubtless think I am crazy, 
so I keep my little observations to myself, and content 
myself with saying in all sincerity how much I envy 
him, and how tempting his life of adventure seems to 
me. 

“ Bah ! you would soon tire of it,” he said, shrugging 
his shoulders : “ there are neither dolls nor playthings 
in those countries.” 

Tire of it! I know I should find it delightful; and, 
besides, have I any playthings here? If M. de Civreuse 
will be kind enough to show them to me, I shall be 
much obliged to him. 

I, who have always loved the impossible, who in my 
cradle wanted the gilt arrow that held my curtains, be- 
cause it was inaccessible to me, and who ever since 
have continued to long for all the arrows out of my 
reach ! 

“ But you do not know what I care for,” I said to M. 
Pierre ; “ I want all I can not reach, and I admire all 
that I can not do.” 

“Like the Malays of Timor,” he said, looking at me 
curiously, “ who adore crocodiles because, they remark, 
very judiciously, ‘A crocodile swallows a man, but a 
man can not swallow a crocodile ’ ! v 

I did not answer. The reasoning does not seem so 
nonsensical ; these Malays appear to me to be logical. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

When one does not love through preference, it is 
something to venerate from fear, and if I knew how to 
make some one say that he adored me— even through 
fear of being eaten up— how willingly would I become 
a Malay ! 


Pierre to Jacques. 

My friend, she is clever, there is no denying it ; but 
her excitability and her ardor frighten me. 

Would you like a squib, which, instead of exploding 
among the stars, danced perpetually before your eyes ? 
For my own part, it makes me nervous. Only, to be 
just, the squib has fine colors and bold curves. 

This means that we have regular conversations, and 
that she is not in the least timid with me. A patriarch 
does not count, you understand. 

But let us begin with my small vanities, if you will. 
The wound turns out better than I feared. The scar 
goes along under the hair, and comes down to the eye- 
brows with a determined look. It can not be helped. 
I might have got it at Malakof, hence it brings no re- 
proach. 

The good doctor himself looked at me with pride — 
an artist’s vanity, which is very excusable. Then he 
called everybody to come and see how smoothly and 
exactly he had closed the wound. 

Benoite complimented me in her own way with her 
usual frankness. “ It was better before, that is sure, but 
it is a good piece of mending all the same ! ” And 


146 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


Mademoiselle Colette nearly did me the honor of show- 
ing sentiment about it. 

She leaned over to look, whiter than her cambric 
handkerchief, and, as I raised my eyebrows to show her 
my agility — 

“ Why, it moves ! ” she cried, horrified, turning to- 
ward the doctor. 

“What?” he asked. “ The skin of the forehead ? I 
hope so ; yours does too.” 

She scowled, and tried it in every direction so as to 
be sure ; then, tranquillized, she approached, and com- 
paring my two eyes, the one just uncovered with the 
other : 

“ It is exactly like it,” she sighed in a low voice. 
And I was forced to conclude that, up to the present, 
she had supposed me cross-eyed, or that I had but one. 

When the excitement was over, the doctor left ; Be- 
noite returned to her furnaces, which are emphatically 
such, for at Erlange the cooking is done 
on the hearth with a tripod, in our fa- 
thers’ fashion ; and Mademoiselle Co- 
lette and I were left alone together as 
usual. 

You could never believe the amount 
of talking we have done for the last 
four days, and my discoveries about 
my young companion are many. To 
begin with, Jacques, be shocked if you 
like, but I have been forced to the conclusion that she 
is absolutely ignorant — a veritable little savage. Only, 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


H 7 


you would lose your time if you attempted to pity her 
for it, and your sympathy would be superfluous, for she 
accepts the fact with the most amiable philosophy, and 
makes a sort of mixture of all her knowledge, which 
has neither head nor tail, and this appears to satisfy her 
perfectly. Yet she has spent two years in one of the 
best convents of Paris ; but we are great fools, you and 
I, if we think that study is the occupation in such places. 

In the different departments the interests vary. 
From dolls they go on to hoops, from hoops to story- 
books, from story-books to society, the polka, or a waltz, 
learned on the close-cut grass of the shrubberies, when 
the teachers are not looking. But study is only an ac- 
cessory — the fifth wheel of the carriage. 

Besides, Mademoiselle d’Erlange has her ideas about 
it, which she explained to me with extreme clearness. 
She has never been able to remember anything which 
did not concern people or things she liked. All this 
she knows perfectly ; as for the rest — it is nothing. 
This is her system. 

Take as an example her history of France ; it is very 
simple. She begins it at Charlemagne, “a great man 
who interests her,” and she knows all about him — the 
ball he holds in his hand, his sword, his big foot, and es- 
pecially his nephew Roland. From him she jumps to 
Henri IV, her great passion. She knows all his witty 
sayings, adores his profile and his impetuosity, but gets 
a little confused in the story of the abjuration and con- 
quest. As long as France belonged to him from the 
cradle, what need had he to fight about it? Her history 


I4 8 THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

stops at Napoleon — the last personage she cares for. 
Since then, have we been awake or asleep ? She hardly 
knows, and, until another great man appears, she does 
not mean to think about it. The poor child is likely to 
wait a long time, to judge from present appearances. 
What do you think? 

Between times she has a mild interest in Bayard, 
Duguesclin, Joan of Arc, and in general all the fighters. 
They serve for breaks in her great interregnums, and I 
am not quite sure that she does not crown one or the 
other of them from time to time. 

You can understand the process, there is nothing 
easier ; and it is not merely a theory. She applies it 
bravely to everything. Thus, in geography she does 
not hesitate to avow her national antipathies, which are 
numerous. 

She dislikes England and the English, for instance. 
On her map the Channel is marked with a red line, 
which Mademoiselle d’Erlange never crosses. As you 
might imagine, the Rhine is inexorably barred ; and, as 
the Italians please her no better than the English, the 
same fatal mark passes over the peaks of the Alps. 
On the other hand, she would go to Russia to interest 
herself in the Slavs, and I believe she is ignorant of 
more than one peculiarity of the French soil. 

If you were to tell her that Parnassus is a hill oppo- 
site Montmartre, she would not be in the least aston- 
ished ; and she mixes up departments, cities, railroads, 
and rivers with the most easy good-nature. 

If you add to this the mass of varied knowledge she 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


I49 


has picked up, no one can tell how, a good deal of po- 
etry, some political ideas, anecdotes of the time of King 
William, a way of adding up figures which would not 
be allowed in even a cobbler’s apprentice, wonderful 
self-possession, and an extreme quickness of apprehen- 
sion, you have a whole which would give a schoolmaster 
the jaundice, but which would delight an imaginative 
man. 

Being neither the one nor the other, I look on and 
enjoy, reposing in my seat in the balcony stalls, and do 
not forget to give you from time to time the other end 
of the telephone — lucky fellow that you are ! 

With no knowledge of real life, and in love with the 
unattainable, if I were to propose to her to-morrow to 
set off for India in my suite, it is ten to one that she 
would accept. 1 say this without the least conceit, for 
it is evident that I should count for nothing in the affair. 
But to see crocodiles, rattlesnakes, and other nice things, 
just think of the pleasure ! She would swim all the 
way, to have it. 

It is astonishing to find the same longing for emo- 
tions and adventure in all women. They prize them 
more than anything else, but they would be mortally 
afraid if they realized their cravings. 

Can you picture to yourself Mademoiselle Colette 
before the jaws of an alligator yawning as he looked at 
her? The poor child would run away — if her legs were 
left to her — with frightful cries. But at the present mo- 
ment she can conceive no happiness equal to that of 
having a close view of these great saurians, which sob in 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


150 

the evening in the plaintive tone of infants in the cradle, 
as she has been told, but which, when they like, if I am 
well informed, can swallow their man as if they had cut 
at least their second teeth. 

I try to disenchant her ; she is determined to see the 
bright side, and she has so much blue on her pallet 
that I despair of finding a place for my spots of black. 
Y ou declare that it is a pity and an abomination to de- 
stroy this dreamer’s illusions. And why are you not 
willing that I should teach the child that water drowns 
and fire burns ? She is capable of not suspecting it, 
and of putting in her hand to try. Do not worry : she 
loses neither sleep nor appetite in listening to my skep- 
tical preaching, and I should like you to see her lunch ; 
it is a comforting spectacle. 

At four o’clock, at the first stroke of the clock — a 
crazy old thing that goes as it likes, with the greatest 
contempt for exactitude, and which Mademoiselle Co- 
lette herself winds up every fortnight in the towers of 
the chateau — she gets up and disappears in haste. 
Whether in the middle of a phrase, with a motion half- 
finished, or lost in the exploration of her ruins, she goes 
at once, and everything else has to stop. The ship- 
wrecked sailors of the Meduse would not have gone 
more eagerly in pursuit of food. 

Five minutes previously she was not thinking of it, 
but at four o’clock she feels faint, seized with a hunger- 
fit, and acts as if, the hand past the quarter, all would 
be lost. 

The first days I waited for her return, surprised and 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


151 

anxious, thinking that some catastrophe must have been 
the motive of her flight ; but at the end of fifteen min- 
utes she came back with her light step, a corner of her 
dress held up to contain her provisions, and, reseating 
herself while eating her repast — and what a repast ! — 
resumed the conversation where she had left it off. 

Regularly, I say it to her praise, she offers to share 
the meal with me, but she gets through the whole so 
easily, that I should have scruples about accepting, and 
1 watch her cracking nuts with her teeth like a Nurem- 
berg toy, and eating dried prunes which resemble 
melted India-rubber, or a kind of soft pasty cake, which 
draws out as if in long white tongues. 

I have only once accepted her polite offer. She had 
taken out of the folds of her dress five red apples be- 
sides an enormous piece of bread. Five apples ! Can 
you understand these young girls’ digestions— incapable 
of getting through a good underdone beefsteak, and re- 
ducing five apples in some minutes ? 

I had refused her first offer, and without insisting 
she went to work. She conscientiously polished each 
apple with her woolen dress before eating it, rubbing it 
over and over again, and only setting teeth to it when 
her black eyes were reflected in the shining mirror of 
its skin. I watched her, amused at what she was doing, 
interested in the spots which resisted, and so much oc- 
cupied with her that at the third apple she perceived it. 
Was there a desire in my look, or did she only think 
so? I do not know, but suddenly stretching out her 
hand — 


152 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ I have five to-day ; really you could take one,” she 
said ; and, as I did not reply, overpowered with this 
munificence — 

“ I will make it shine for you,” she added ; and with 
the same corner of her drapery, with an energy that 
brought the blood to her face, she obtained the proper 
polish on the apple, and held it out to me. 

Of course I ate it with an amount of gratitude pro- 
portioned to the benefit, but this symbolic fruit made 
me anxious, and I expected to see the serpent appear 
from under the furniture. Happily, there was none — 
at least in appearance. 

This reminds me of a physiological idea of Made- 
moiselle Colette’s which will amuse you, I am sure, 
and complete the description of her scientific attain- 
ments. 

It was yesterday, at the fateful hour of which we 
have been speaking. On the stroke of the hour she had 
gone, and the quarter had struck before she returned. 
It was a perfect anomaly ; fifteen minutes to compose 
her feast! What would she bring back this time? I 
watched the door. Five minutes later she returned 
with both hands full, and walking with as much dignity 
as though she were carrying a relic. For an instant I 
thought she might be bringing back her Saint Joseph 
with her, and that they were reconciled, but it was 
nothing like that. The object of so much care was a 
piece of hot bread which smoked in her fingers — a 
hunch, as they say here — nearly the size of a quarter of 
a loaf. In the middle of the soft paste a hollow had 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


153 


been made, and was filled with thick cream, which as it 
melted gave out a delicious odor. 

She gave a sigh of relief as she sat down, shook her 
head with a confidential 



air, and, showing me the 
object, said in a low voice 
with an expressive ges- 
ture : 


“ It burns ! ” Then, 
without waiting, she at- 
tacked the fabulous bread, 
biting and blowing by 
turns. 


“ But,” 1 could not 

help saying, “ you are never going to eat all that ? ” 
“Yes. Why not? It is excellent.” 

“ Perhaps. But it is as heavy as lead. It will dis- 
agree with your stomach.” 

“ My stomach ! ” she repeated in a tone of disdain, 
“ what do you suppose it can matter to my stomach ? ” 
And she threw herself back to laugh at her ease over 
the idea that half a pound of hot dough could incon- 
venience her stomach. 

“ It may give it trouble to digest,” I quietly replied. 
Then, as she opened her big eyes, I reflected that she 
probably did not know what I was talking about, and call- 
ing to my aid the classical definition of my childhood — 
“The stomach,” I resumed in a didactic tone, “is a 
sort of pocket shaped like a bagpipe. Its distended ex- 
tremity is placed on the left side, and above — ” 


154 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ Ok, very well,” she interrupted, “ it is not in the 
least like that, as I understand it ! ” 

And as the bread was decidedly too hot, she put it 
in her lap, and, requiring no urging, went on : 

“This is how I think it: I imagine a little, old man, 
very, very small, bent over, in a brown coat, with a wig 
and queue, and a gold-headed cane, who is always going 
and coming in a little room. In the middle of it is a 
big chimney, down which come all the things that are 
sent him, and he rushes to it whenever there is an ar- 
rival. He leans down, sorts them out, looks, rubs his 
hands when what he receives seems good to him, shrugs 
his shoulders and gets angry when it is bad. ‘ The 
fools ! what have they sent me ? ’ he grumbles ; ‘ what 
do they expect me to do with that ? ’ And he pushes it 
with his foot into a corner, where useless things are put, 
where perhaps my hot bread will go — it is possible — 
but that is all. As for a pocket and a bagpipe, I have 
never heard of such a thing, and I do not want to be 
worried about it. My little old man is enough for my 
work ; we understand each other perfectly, and if he 
scowls a little on the days when I eat green apples, he 
is at least polite enough not to make any remarks. Why 
should I change?” 

The bread had stopped smoking, the crust cracked 
as it cooled, and the cream smelt better than ever. 
Mademoiselle Colette took the cake delicately in her 
fingers, and finished her luncheon without a word, sure 
that she had convinced me of the existence of her little 
man. Such is her logic. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


155 


But in hearing her tell of her past life, one may un- 
derstand her peculiarities! Yesterday I questioned her 
on her childhood, trying to find the trace of a governess, 
professor, or any other director, and, as I could find 
nothing resembling one — 

“ But who brought you up ? ” I asked at last. 

“ Nobody ! ” she replied. “ I came up in my own 
way as best I could ! Thank Goodness, I had that com- 
pensation for my solitude ! ” 

And she made a gesture with her hand, to indicate 
something growing as it likes. 

Can you imagine this situation — this young girl 
springing up as wild oats do, between her dog and her 
old nurse who is even more her slave than the dog, and 
with twenty -four hours every day to get into any scrapes 
she chooses! I can now understand the incident to 
which I am indebted for the pleasure of her acquaint- 
ance: to pass from thought to action, it is only neces- 
sary for her to have the material time necessary for the 
accomplishment of her fancy. She knows no other 
condition. 

There are, however, in this existence melancholy 
hours which she describes without reserve, and the aunt 
of whom I have told you — a frightful old woman — has 
just given me a specimen of her ill-humor. She has 
made an attack upon us from which our little society 
has hardly yet recovered, and the traces of which will 
remain. 

About two hours ago I was watching “ One,” who 
was executing all his best tridks under the direction of 


156 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


Mademoiselle Colette, who did not disdain to take part 
from time to time in the exercise, when the door opened 
suddenly and a woman entered. Tall, dry, bony, ugly 
enough to take the role of an ogress, if she chose, she 
announced herself in a voice which instantly brought 
her young niece to her feet, and made the dog place 
himself in front of his mistress, showing his teeth, as if 
to protect her. 

“ Sir ! I am Mademoiselle d’Epine,” she said to me. 

“Very well named,”* I said to myself; but aloud, 
“ Mademoiselle, I have the honor to present my respects 
to you.” 

But what did she care for my respects ? 

“ A month ago,” she continued, “ you arrived in my 
house, coming from nobody knows where ; and, as I 
have thought that you must be now at about the end 
of your visit, I wished to see you once before your de- 
parture.” 

“Arrived” seemed to me curious, and “visit” more 
peculiar still, and you will agree that it would be impos- 
sible to put a man more decidedly out of doors ; but, 
before I could answer, Mademoiselle d’Erlange had re- 
covered herself. 

“ Say rather in our house,” she exclaimed ; “ and even 
in my house, for M. de Civreuse is in my wing, as you 
know very well. And as for the way in which he came, 
which you seem to have forgotten, I will refresh your 
memory. 

“ I wounded him in the head by throwing something 

* l£pine, a thorn. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


157 


out as he was passing by, certainly not thinking of us. 
Benoite and I carried him into the kitchen half-dead. 
Then, while she was preparing this room, and I was 
watching him down below, I swore, on my knees by his 
side, to take care of him, to cure him, and to obtain his 
pardon. Do you now remember these things ? I told 
you all once before.” 

“ I only remember this,” she replied, angrily, going 
toward the young girl, “ that once before I protested 
against your playing the part of sick-nurse, which you 
have undertaken in an inexcusable manner, and that 
this time I will find a way to force you to relinquish it.” 

“ Why did you not take it upon yourself ?” returned 
Mademoiselle Colette; “there is more than one place 
by the bed, I suppose.” 

“A bed which I shall most certainly have left by 
this evening, mademoiselle,” I returned, “ and which I 
should never have consented to occupy a single instant 
if I had been even more than half-dead, or had in the 
least suspected that I was received against the wishes of 
any one here ! ” 

I was beside myself. The most insolent things came 
to my lips, and I really do not know what kept me from 
jumping up instantly. Certainly it was not the presence 
of this woman, and, if she had been alone, I am sure I 
should have revenged myself by shocking her mod- 
esty by that unexpected spectacle. But she was not 
alone. 

Besides, she did not answer my protestations by a 
single word ; but, turning to her niece, said : 


1 5 8 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ You will be forced to obedience by some one wier 
than you are.” 

Then, judging that she had accomplished her pr- 
pose, she turned toward the door with her long, ga\ky 
step, as a dismasted ship past usefulness is drawn up3n 
the beach, knocking against every rock. 

But she was not half-way there when a fourth pr- 
son appeared on the scene ; it was my doctor, \iio 
darted in like an arrow, with knit brow and compressd 
lips, and seized her brusquely by the arm. 

“ Who speaks of obedience in a sick-room when he 
doctor is not there ? ” he said, rudely. 

He had been listening behind the door, and did ot 
conceal it. 

“ You,” he said, turning to Mademoiselle Colete, 
“ you are in your proper place here. Do not stir. I 
put you here, I keep you here, and consider it ny 
business. 

“ As for you, sir,” he said to me, “ I suppose yu 
have not forgotten our first conversation ; you know re- 
views on the responsibility I take. I have your wod v 
and you will not leave Erlange until I give the pr- 
mission.” 

“As for you, Mademoiselle,” he added, looking it 
the old maid, whom he still held by the arm, “ I hae 
the honor of offering you my arm to take you backto 
your room, and on the way I will give you some 1 - 
formation about fractures, the effects of which you o 
not seem to understand, and which will interest youj 
am sure.” 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


159 


Dragging off Mademoiselle d’Epine utterly con- 
founded, on whom he smiled placidly, he took her down 
the whole length of the 
room. He stopped on the 
threshold. 

“ And take particular 
notice,” said he, turning 
and looking at us, “that 
Mademoiselle d’Erlange 
was mistaken by one half 
just now. It is not one 
wing which is hers, but the 
entire chateau, ruins and 
all.” Then they went out. 

T o say that I was raging 
internally would be feeble ; 

I could not keep from revengeful gestures, and I longed 
to be able to make some one suffer. But in spite bf the 
malice of my adversary, as she claimed to belong to the 
gentler sex she was out of my reach ; and yet I have 
seen grenadiers who would gladly pass for beaus if they 
could have her broad shoulders. Besides, I remembered 
Mademoiselle Colette : the attack on her had been still 
worse. 

I turned toward her, expecting to find her in tears ; 
but she was far from that. With flashing eyes and head 
erect, she seemed a Bellona in anger. 

“ A wicked woman ! a wicked woman ! ” she cried, 
stamping her foot on the ground. 

Then suddenly throwing herself into an arm-chair — 



! 6 o THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

“ I have lived nearly eighteen years with her ! ” she 
burst forth. 

“ Is she always like this ? ” I asked her. 

“ Always.” 

“ But what is the matter with her ? ” 

“ Who knows ? ” she replied, shaking her head. “ Sour 
grapes, perhaps. 1 think there are some women who 
grow up ill-tempered, as there is some grass full of net- 
tles. She evidently belongs to the nettles.” 

“ But when 1 was not here, why was she generally 
cross with you ? ” 

She did not answer, looking at me with a hesitating 
air, the shadow of a smile lifting the corner of her lip, 
while she mechanically pulled at her dog’s long hair. 1 
looked at her, waiting for her to speak, and, as I looked, 
I was so struck with the contrast between this charm- 
ing face and the hard, broad mask of the woman who 
had just left us, that, without thinking, I exclaimed : 

“ Is it because you are eighteen, and she — ?” 

The smile deepened, and Mademoiselle d’Erlange, 
looking at me through her eyelashes, said : 

“ She was eighteen once, but — ” She was silent 
again, lowering her eyelashes completely, so that they 
beat on her pink cheeks like a lace fan. Embarrassment 
is very rare with her, but is becoming, and without 
hesitation I put her thoughts into words : 

“ She was eighteen once, of course ; but her spring 
had not the flowers of yours: that is it.” 

How I allowed myself to be drawn into such a mad- 
rigal, the devil only knows ! But, as Mademoiselle Co- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . j 6 i 

lette had bravely defended me just now, she deserved 
that I should come to her aid in my turn. She took it as 
a simple statement of fact, began to laugh gayly, and 
raised her eyebrows with a little gesture that signified, 
“ Yes, you are right this time ! ” Then, without tran- 
sition, her confidence completely restored, she let flow 
the current of her recollections, relating episodes of her 
childhood which concerned her aunt, telling how fright- 
ened she used to be at her as a child ; the whole with- 
out bitterness, but with a comic and malicious fancy 
which gave a touch of life and burlesque relief to the 
portrait of her very peculiar guardian. Egotism and 
jealousy are the two dominant qualities of this woman, 
and I am going to tell you a trait that reveals her. 

Naturally very fond of good eating, she manages so 
that the limited resources of the house shall never inter- 
fere with her requirements ; but the bill of fare, gen- 
erally carefully prepared, is never better than on fast- 
days. On these mornings some delicate little dish is 
prepared, and as they sit down to table Mademoiselle 
d’Epine says to her niece : 

“ My stomach does not bear fasting, Colette ; you 
will have to fast for us both.” 

And the niece eats her sardines or her vegetables, 
accompanied by the odor of the squabs eaten by her 
aunt, who piously offers Heaven this compromise, pray- 
ing to have the substitution accepted. 

I hope that some day in purgatory, when her accounts 
are made up, she will find that her schemes were not 
wise ; but purgatory is far off, and until then who can 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


162 

rescue this child from her clutches, and, above all, who 
will give her back her past years, and supply the affec- 
tionate care and the education which she has not re- 
ceived ? 

I can tell you, Jacques, a sequestration is going on 
here, and that is what this woman wants. 

The roast chickens which she refuses to give her 
niece, the soft covers, and the soft bed, all the comforts 
which she reserves for herself alone, are nothing ; but 
she intends to imprison the girl morally between four 
walls, and to keep her spirit and her youth so closely 
guarded that no one shall guess the life that is crushed 
under the ruins. 

What would you call this crime, if you deny that it 
is imprisonment, and how would you punish it ? 

For my part, I intend to circumvent her, and without 
delay. The day after I leave here 1 will begin the work. 
If I have to make an outcry through the press, assemble 
a family council, or call in the aid of the police, I will 
succeed, and the door of this cave shall be thrown open. 
To whom can belong the part of righter of wrongs, if 
not to those who despise the world and know it as it is? 

In exchange for her watchings and the care she has 
taken of me, Mademoiselle Colette shall have her liberty. 
I will open the door of her cage. By all that is sacred, 
Jacques — you hear? — I swear it! 

Half an hour later the doctor came back, and you 
can imagine the discussion. 

“ Doctor, I intend to leave.” 

“ Do not let us go back to that, I beg.” 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


163 


“ Give me back my promise.” 

“ Most certainly not. You are at the most difficult 
and delicate stage ; do not spoil such a beautiful fracture 
for me.” 

“ It is impossible for me to stay here after the scene 
we have just had ; you must see that.” 

“ I tell you that woman is crazy. Shall I sign a paper 
committing her to Charenton, so as to put your mind at 
rest ? ” 

And as I insisted — 

“ Sir,” he said, coolly, “ my age and character are 
sufficient for me to assume the responsibility of my acts; 
will you have the goodness to send me any persons who 
have any fault to find with them — ” And he turned his 
back, while Mademoiselle Colette kept on saying : 

“ But since you are in my house ! But since you 
have been told that you are in my house ! ” 

The poor little thing saw no further in it than 
that. 

Finally, the doctor promised on his honor to let me 
go in ten days, and on my side I have promised not to 
attempt to escape before that time. But all the same, I 
am exasperated. It is useless talking, the position is 
false. Every time the door creaks I tremble like a run- 
away school-boy, and I would like to send Mademoiselle 
d’Erlange about her business. Only, she sees no harm 
in it. It was a scene, that is all ; she has witnessed 
many others, and she continues her usual life in perfect 
composure. 


6 4 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


April 2olh . 

It is all over — the good days are ending ; and in spite 
of all I can do now, without knowing how or why, all 
my reveries end in tears. 

It is without wishing it, and even without perceiving 
it. I seat myself as I used to do on my divan, I think of 
the same things, and what pleased me yesterday, what 
made me laugh so gayly that 1 had to bury my head in 
the cushions for fear some one would hear me, makes me 
sad now. I still bury my head in the same place, but 
when 1 take it up the stuff is moist, and it is only then 
that 1 perceive that I have wept. 

What a frightful scene my aunt made, and how it 
wounded me ! I was so afraid that M. Pierre would be 
angry ! 

The doctor happily arranged it all ; but he remains 
a little constrained, a little embarrassed. Perhaps he 
is vexed with us in spite of all, and that makes me so 
sorry ! 

Only one week more to stay here ! I should not 
have thought he could have been cured so quickly ; it 
is too short! That is to say, it is not the illness which 
is too short, it is the stay. I thought he would be much 
longer at Erlange, and above all— Well, I did not 
think it would end in this way. Now it is over, nobody 
will care for Colette : when he has passed the door, he 
will not think of her any more, and she will be alone, 
much more lonely than before, as the darkness is black- 
er in a place which has been light, and from which the 
light has been taken away. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


165 

Very softly this tenacious folly which I have in me 
hopes still. Why and what ? I can not say, but I 
feel there is a change coming — I am afraid it is far 
off! 

At least, M. de Civreuse will suspect nothing. With 
him I am gayer than ever, and without effort. It is so 
nice in that big room ! — I tell the whole truth only to 
my confidants, my cushion and my diary, and when I 
have finished with the first, I carry it to the fire and 
dry it, and I take the second. The margins are quite 
spoiled ; without thinking, I write, two initials, always 
the same, lengthwise, across, interlaced, separate, and 
just now I put his whole name on my left hand — a letter 
on every nail, and two on the last, the thumb. 

It was funny, and at first 
stupid little tear, and the 
ink was blotted. — And so 
everything is blotted out. 

But yesterday I chose 
my ground better. I ran 
to the end of the park, and 
on the bark of a great pine- 
tree, the one near which I 
used to dream and which 
I climbed last autumn to 
watch for adventures, with 
my little dagger I cut the 
name which occupies my 
thoughts. There is no other way of telling a tree what 
one thinks, and I was glad to tell it. 


I laughed ; then came this 



1 66 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


When I came in, M. Pierre noticed my damp dress 
and wet shoes. 

“ Have you been out ? ” he asked. 

And 1 answered, “ Yes, I took a walk.” 

If he knew what walk ! 


Pierre to Jacques. 

“ My friend, you are an idiot.” 

Why does the beginning of the letter which Henri 
IV wrote quite three hundred years ago to his faith- 
ful Sully come to mind to-day ? Analogy, probably, 
and because on this point at least you resemble this 
morning that model of ministers. 

Seriously, Jacques, this time your letter made me 
angry. I have arrived at the age of reason, I suppose, 
and I know what I feel and what I want, and your 
witticisms have no sense in them. 

My pulse is excellent, my head clear, and my heart 
light, whatever you may say, and I have no hidden 
object in the efforts that I am about to make for the 
good of my young hostess. 

“ You are mixing yourself up in things which do not 
concern you ; you are drawing down on yourself mill- 
ions of annoyances, and risk being put in your place 
by the notary who will politely send you about your 
business, and all for a person who is utterly indifferent 
to you ! How probable it all is, and how can you ex- 
pect me to believe that, especially when I know that 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


167 

the person in question is a young and beautiful creat- 
ure ! Be frank, confess, and marry her : it is much 
simpler.” 

My poor Jacques, you settle things with a club, as 
one beats down nuts ; your “ much simpler ” is heroic, 
even more so than you suspect. 

I do not work for reward, my friend ; it is for 
honor, for the love of art, like a knight of old, and you 
must confess that if all those brave paladins, who for- 
merly defended the widow and the orphan, had thought 
themselves forced, or even authorized, to marry all the 
prisoners whom they delivered in a year, each one 
would have possessed a harem, and morality would 
have swept away the whole within six months. 

Remember that I am only just beginning my jour- 
ney around the world, and do not make a chimney- 
piece of my sword at the first stage ; it dances in its 
scabbard at the thought of all the fine things it is to 
accomplish, and the idea of repose by the fireside is 
horrible ! If this little blonde seems of such inestimable 
value to you, why do you not come and take up the 
work yourself ? 

I can tell you in confidence, if you want to know, 
that Mademoiselle Colette is in love with you already. 
She is sure of it, she has told me ; and if I had not been 
afraid of one of your usual extravagances, I should have 
told you so before. Now you know. Be quick, and I 
will introduce you. 

And now, let us leave this subject, I beg you, for it 

irritates me. I have hardly a week more to spend 
12 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


1 68 

here. Do not let me play that excellent doctor false, 
and leave some fine evening, sick of the whole subject ; 
and if you are not seeking a quarrel with me, for 
Heaven’s sake leave me in peace, and cease your senti- 
mental forecasts ! 

I do not say but that a man of enthusiastic tempera- 
ment, an untried heart, and some youthful illusions, 
might be affected here — the strange surroundings, the 
intimacy, those beautiful eyes ! 

But it is not my fault, Jaqcues, if I am no longer 
twenty — to-morrow there will be just nine years since 
that was the case ; and there are two things one can 
never have back : youth and illusions. If you can give 
them back to me, on the word of a disenchanted man, I 
will fall at her feet. 

Our last days pass very pleasantly. Mademoiselle 
d’Erlange is gayer than ever, and no constraint is pos- 
sible near her. 

I confess it to you in private, this unconcernedness 
and these good spirits surprise me a little. 

Certainly I am neither a fool nor a lady-killer. I 
appreciate myself at my real value, but I am perhaps 
worth a little emotion, and I remember a brilliant circle 
where I held my own. Doubtless Paris demands less 
than Erlange. 

Remark, if you please, that I am delighted that it is 
so ; the contrary would have embarrassed me, saddened 
me, filled me with remorse, and I only speak of it be- 
cause I write everything. But you must acknowledge 
that it is singular that a young girl who is alone, who 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


169 

finds her life tiresome, and who suddenly sees her first 
romance appear in the shape of a young man, tolerably 
good-looking, receives it thus; we may throw to the 
winds the legend which makes young girls’ hearts of in- 
flammable stuff. Besides, I am ready to believe that 
Mademoiselle d’Erlange’s exuberant spirits serve to 
relieve her, and that so many outward manifestations 
leave her inner thoughts in a state of great placidity ; 
her heart may even be a little hard — a fact easily ac- 
counted for by her childhood, so devoid of tenderness 
and joy. 

However it may be, all is for the best, and we em- 
ploy our last afternoons over the noble game of check- 
ers. 

They do not go on without some tempests, which 
disturb the sittings, for Mademoiselle Colette does not 
like to be beaten ; and after the first lessons, when I 
thought I ought to favor her, 1 have gone back to my 
usual style of playing, and now beat her five times out 
of six. 

Her patience, which is not great, is quickly ex- 
hausted under these conditions, and she gets as angry as 
a cat. She first gets red, scowls a little, drums nerv- 
ously on the table, and finally, when the case seems to 
her hopeless, she sweeps all the checkers together with 
her hand. I then lean back majestically on my cush- 
ions and contemplate the beams of the ceiling, until she 
gives in, which is never long. She replaces the men, 
pushes the board toward me, and mutters : 

“ It was really too bad ! ” Then, convinced that this 


?o 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


explains everything, she holds out her closed hands to- 
ward me to draw, so as to see which is to begin, and 
everything goes on in the same order. 

Invariably, in the beginning, I propose to give her 
some men, and also invariably she refuses with an air 
of offended dignity, evidently considering her sweep- 
ing off the board much more regular than this favor, 
and insisting passionately at the beginning of each 
game that I shall play with her as I would with any- 
body else, seriously and without helping her. 

I, the slave of orders, obey, and in five minutes more 
she is stamping her foot : it is logical. 

Just now we were engaged in a skirmish ; I saw her 
getting herself in a scrape, and twice running, without 
meaning to do so, I swept off four victims at a blow. 
You may fancy her state of mind : she bit her under 
lip so that the blood receded, and she looked over the 
board with the despairing glance of a swimmer who 
has lost footing. 

Prudently I drew back my fingers, foreseeing some 
formidable blow ; but things changed, her brow sud- 
denly cleared, her lip resumed its natural appearance, 
and, with her fingers on one of the men, she conducted 
it obliquely across the board, pushing off such of my 
men as were in her way, without violence, and without 
appearing to know that she was going against the rules. 

At the edge she stopped, and said, very gravely : 

“ Your turn ! ” 

“ What do you mean by my turn ? What are you 
doing? ” I asked. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


171 


“ Well,” she replied with superb calm, “ I am going 
to make a queen. I should never get there as we were 
going, so I have taken another way.” 

In everything there is this same contempt for bar- 
riers and rules ; this untutored nature would not be out 
of place in a tribe of wild Indians. I can imagine her 
in her tent, with feathers in her hair, a string of flowers 
around her shoulders, rivaling the wild goats in her 
capers, and baptized by the enthusiastic tribe as “ Sing- 
ing Bird” or “Flying Arrow'.” 

In the mean while, Flying Arrow performs her duties 
as mistress of the house, and does her best to amuse me. 

For a week I have been able to get up. Aided by 
Benoite, whose strong shoulder serves me as a cane, I 
reach an arm - chair 
placed near a window, 

I extend my leg in 
its splints in another 
chair in front of me, 
and, with Mademoi- 
selle Colette as a 
guide, I learn to know 
the court and the 
principal points of the 
chateau. “ There,” 
she says, “is the li- 
brary, there the dining-room, there the chapel, and 
there ’’—showing me the ruins this time— “ were the 
drawing-rooms, a large guard-room, an oratory, and 
numerous galleries.” 



172 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


The whole — ruins and remaining portions — is superb 
it is pure Louis XIII style, both elegant and severe ; 
and there is sculpture which makes me dream, and on 
which I sincerely compliment the chatelaine of the place, 
who criticises and appreciates it with her usual origi- 
nality. 

When I tell you that I have made the acquaintance 
of Frangoise, the third of Mademoiselle Colette’s attach- 
ments, you will agree with me that I know all that is 
necessary, and that I can leave Erlange. 

Yesterday was a superb day, dry and bright; one 
side of the window was open, in spite of the keen air, 
and I was breathing it with delight, when I saw my 
young nurse cross the court. She looked up as she 
passed and made a little sign to me with her hand, and 
ran to the door of the servants’ quarters which opens on 
the court. 

“ I want to show you Frangoise,” she cried. 

She came out in a moment with a big, short-winded, 
half-blind animal, with a large body, huge neck, four 
long, thin legs, and a whitey-yellow coat. 

Utterly indifferent to this ugliness, she talked to the 
beast, patted her, stuffed her with sugar and bread, and 
all so quickly that the poor old mare could not eat what 
was given her. When she had ended — 

“ She does not trot badly — you shall see,” she called 
to me. 

She threw a blanket upon her, dragged her to the 
stone steps, and sprang on her back like a fairy, and, 
exciting her with her voice, made her start on a trot. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 73 


The animal stumbled on all the stones, she threw up her 
big- head in fear, and with her smoking nostrils she re- 
sembled the beast in the Apocalypse, carrying off some 
unhappy spirit on its uncertain course. 

“ That is a game at which you may break your 
neck ! ” I cried to Mademoiselle d’Erlange. 

“ Bah ! ” she replied ; “ we know each other very 
well.” 

At the tenth round she let herself slide down to the 
ground so quickly that I thought she had fallen, and 
took her friend back with the same protestations of ten- 
derness that she had lavished on her as she brought her 
out. 

This is how she speaks to animals, and I am not sur- 
prised that she has nothing left for men — she gives them 
her whole heart. 

In all probability I shall write to you the next time 
from the village. I shall only remain there long enough 
to pay a visit of thanks to my hostesses, to see my good 
doctor, and to inform you of my plans. 

Turn the page, for the adventure is over, and I shall 
probably see you soon. I have missed so many steam- 
ers already that I am tempted to let still another sail 
without me, so as to go and see you in your country 
home. 


April 28th. 

All is over. M. de Civreuse went yesterday, and I 
feel lost here. 

It is true I have known Erlange empty and silent 


i; 4 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


before, and I have been used to hearing my steps re- 
sound in the halls, and my voice against the wood-work, 
but all is changed now. 

It was only tediousness before ; now it is sadness, 
and the things weigh differently. 

From time to time I try to be brave, and play a little 
comedy to myself. I put things in order, I go and 
come, and hum gay little airs ; then I sit down beside 
my dog, I take his head on my knees, and I talk to him 
as I used to ; only, even with him, I detect myself in 
saying what is not true. 

“ Six weeks to mend a broken leg, ‘ One,’ is enor- 
mous,” I said to him just now, “ and we would never 
have thought it could last so long, would we?” 

This is not true — it is not true at all, for I counted 
on twice as long, at least for the present, and on always 
for later. 

Benoite looks at me uneasily. She is not free from 
the suspicion, or at least fear, of a little sentiment, and 
she would willingly keep me by her ; but that is what I 
do not want, so I pretend that the carrying back of my 
belongings occupies me, and escape. 

In reality, I do nothing at all, and I have left every- 
thing as it was yesterday, for I dare not return to my 
old room. There are so many associations in every cor- 
ner that they overpower me when I go in, and I could 
not sleep there for the present. I should be afraid that 
all the ghosts would find out my secret, and go and tell 
it to M. Pierre, who would laugh over it perhaps, and 
I want to come here only to dream. In the library I 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


175 


weep, I regret, I get angry, I do as I like ; then, when 
I am myself again, it is my hour for recreation. I take 
the well-known way, I sit down in my usual place, I 
look at the empty bed, the arm-chair near the window, 
with no one in it, and I remember ! 

Often, too, I get angry. After all, what did this 
man come here for? Why has he found a place in my 
head and heart, since he wants nothing from me ? And 
what power is it which sends thus a beginning of happi- 
ness, just what is needed for happiness, which lets you 
appreciate it, look well at it, and which snatches it away - 
at the very moment when you close your hand, thinking 
to hold it ? 

Is this what is called Providence ? 

Still, one must be just ; M. de Civreuse did nothing 
to attract me, and I even think it was his coldness which 
struck and won me. 

Gloomy as he was, he sometimes smiled, and there 
is a special charm in the smile of those who are habitu- 
ally cold. It is like the winter sun, or like the aloe- 
flower of which M. Pierre told me, which blossoms but 
once in a hundred years, and whose rarity gives it its 
value. Why should I have been taken by so rare a 
flower ? 

Our last day was the best of all, and 1 am not sure 
that even he did not feel a very little emotion. 

When I came in at my usual hour in the morning, I 
found near his arm-chair a table on which were paper, a 
box of paints, and a bundle of brushes and pencils. Be- 
noite gave him a glass, and as soon as she had gone out — 


176 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“Would you be willing,” he said, speaking quickly, 
“ to allow me to sketch your portrait in my album ? I 
have just done this side of the chateau, but my remem- 
brance of Erlange would be very incomplete if my sick- 
nurse was not on the first page.” 

Of course I answered yes, and I drew near to see 
what he held, while I asked : 

“How shall I place myself — standing, sitting, in 
profile, or front face? ” And at the same time I tried all 
the positions. 

He began to laugh, and, after reflecting a mo- 
ment — 

“ If you would be good enough to seat yourself in 
the large arm-chair beside the fireplace, as you were 
the first night when I awoke here, I would be obliged,” 
he said. 

“ But without the dress, I suppose.” 

“ Without the dress, unfortunately.” 

“Unfortunately? Shall I go and put it on?” 

“ Oh, I would not dare — ” 

“ But it will only take a second — ” 

And I was gone before he had finished his phrase. 

As I had said, I came back in an instant. Only, the 
skirt of the unknown ancestress is too long for me ; it 
was in vain that I held it up with both hands, my feet 
caught in the hem, so that I came in stumbling, and 
when at last I let go of it so as to make a sweeping 
courtesy to M. de Civreuse, it happened that in going 
toward the fireplace I fell heavily on my knees. 

M. Pierre gave an exclamation, a sort of cry which 





















































































He went on and on, raising his eyes to me every moment. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 77 

certainly pleased me, and made a motion as of hastily 
rising. 

“And your knee ! ” I cried. “ Do not move.” Then 
I quickly recovered my feet and seated myself in the 
arm-chair. But he was uneasy. 

“ You are sure you are not hurt ? ” he said. “ What 
an absurd idea of mine it was to make you put it on I 
Really, you have nothing the matter with you ? ” 

I answered no, my heart beating a little — not from 
my fall, but for the anxious tone in the voice that ques- 
tioned me ; and it was a full quarter of an hour, after I 
had had time to recover, before he began to work. 

He went on and on, raising his eyes to me every 
moment, looking at me with a persistence that was quite 
embarrassing, and making me rest — that is to say, move 
about — every quarter of an hour. Luncheon interrupted 
us, but at two o’clock the sketch was finished. Then he 
called me to him, and I could not help exclaiming when 
I saw the paper he held out to me : 

“ It is I ! Oh, but how pretty it is ! ” 

The fact is, the pink little lady who smiled at me 
from the arm-chair beside the large dark chimney-piece, 
the fire-dogs showing clearly against the carving of the 
wood-work, was a real picture, and I could not help ad- 
miring it. 

“ Which is pretty ? ” M. de Civreuse asked, sarcas- 
tically ; “ you or the sketch ? ” 

“ The portrait, of course ! ” 

He looked at me a moment, smiling, then, in a very 
different tone from the one I was acquainted with, said : 


1/3 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


“ The portrait is you, for unfortunately the likeness 
is good. There is nothing to change in your exclama- 
tion.” 

I was silent ; it is perhaps the second time that 1 
have heard a word of praise from his lips, and it moved 
me more than I could have wished. Still, I desired 
very, very much to have, as he had, a souvenir of the 
charming time that was slipping away from me, and I 
tried nervously to think of what I could say or do. 

“ And what if I sketched your portrait ? ” I began, 
jokingly. 

“ Certainly. 1 shall be delighted,” he replied, very 
seriously. “ I will keep as still as a statue.” 

“ But I do not draw very well,” I stammered, rather 
frightened to find my offer accepted at once ; “ the only 
portrait I have ever done was of ‘ One.’ ” 

“Very well,” said he; “I shall be in excellent com- 
pany.” 

He held out a drawing-board, paper, and pencils, and 
turned his head so that I could get the profile. 

“ Will it answer like this ? ” he asked. 

I replied, “ Perfectly.” 

I was quite disconcerted, and he meant that I should 
acknowledge it. 

However, I began mechanically, looking at him as 
he had looked at me, and thinking him handsome, as I 
only wish that he thought me. 

But at the end of fifteen minutes I was tired, nervous, 
and incapable of going on. The head on my paper 
might have stood for anything — a judge’s wig, a scare- 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


179 


crow, a negro king ; and I recalled my attempts of last 
winter when I amused myself drawing my dog, and in 
spite of all my efforts gave my favorite the head of a 
sheep, the coat of a bear, and shaggy legs which even a 
King Charles would have been ashamed of. 

At any other time I should have laughed, but I 
counted the minutes, thinking always of his departure ; 
this disturbed me, and I felt the tears come to my eyes. 
This was what I had sworn should not happen, and I 
ran to the fireplace to throw my paper in the fire, 
crying : 

“ It is impossible ! I do not know how ! ” But M. 
de Civreuse stopped me. 

“ My portrait! ” he said. “ Show me my portrait ; I 
have the right to see it.” 

I gave it to him without resisting. He took it and 
looked at it gravely ; then, still just as seriously, said : 

“ Will you allow me to retouch it? ” 

I nodded, and he wiped it all out with his handker- 
chief. Then with four strokes he made a profile which 
was a caricature of his own, but so comically like it that 
it was impossible to look at it without laughing. 

Underneath he wrote in his large handwriting: 

“ With the respectful compliments of the patient to 
the author,” and held it out to me. 

At that moment the doctor entered. I was sick at 
heart ; I knew that all was over, and as I left the room 
I heard the carriage ordered for M. de Civreuse drive 
into the court. I rushed to my refuge, the drawing in 
my hand, and there, alone, I looked at it. But instead 


jgo THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

of laughing, as I had done before, I saw the tears fall on 
the ridiculous nose, on the bristling mustache which M. 
Pierre had made ; and it was natural enough, for the 
drawing resembled the original as my dream resembled 
the reality. 

A minute after, the doctor called me back. M. de 
Civreuse was standing in the middle of the room, sup- 
porting himself on two black crutches, which made me 
feel dreadfully. It seemed to me that I had lamed him 
for life. I knew that I grew pale, and involuntarily I 
turned and stretched out my hands to the doctor. 

“ It is only for the first days,” he said, smiling, for he 
understood my fear. 

On the ground were the splints which had replaced 
the plaster for the last two weeks. 

“ Let us burn them together,” said M. de Civreuse,. 
pointing to them. 

I picked them up as he had suggested, and we went 
toward the fire together. 

He managed his crutches well, but the noise they 
made on the floor disturbed me so that 1 did not know 
what I was doing. The doctor went out to call Benoite, 
and I threw the first and then the second piece in the 
fire. 

With the third my courage came back, and, raising 
my eyes to M. Pierre, I succeeded in saying in a low 
voice, but without trembling : 

“ Do you forgive me? ” 

“ Ah ! mademoiselle,” he cried, “ I hoped there would 
never be any more question of that between us.” 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 

I thanked him with a motion of my head, and silent- 
ly continued my work on my knees by the fireplace, 
almost at his feet, while he, standing, supporting him- 
self by the mantel-piece, towered above me with his 
whole height. How different it all was from what I 
had imagined ! 

In the mean while Benoite entered. She came to say 
good-by to the traveler, and advanced courtesying, and 
beginning a little speech, in which she wished him good 
luck and a “ God bless you ! ” 

He listened to the end ; then, putting aside his 
crutches, and supporting the wounded knee against the 
arm-chair — 

“ 1 can not thank you with words for all your devo- 
tion,” he said, gayly ; “ you must allow me to embrace 
you.” 

And taking the poor old woman, who seemed stupe- 
fied, by the shoulders, he kissed her affectionately on 
both cheeks. Then, as the doctor called from below, 
“ Come, come, it will be night before we get there!” he 
turned to me. 

“ Our good doctor will be kind enough to say good- 
by for me to Mademoiselle d’Epine,” said he ; “ 1 did not 
wish to give you the trouble ! ” He stopped a moment, 
then more slowly, as if he were seeking for words, 
added : “ Allow me, mademoiselle, to express to you my 
gratitude, not only for your care, but for the grace and 
good-humor with which you have enlivened the mo- 
notony of a sick-room. It is to be twice kind to be so 
in such a manner.” 

13 


182 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


I held out my hand unable to speak, for it seemed as 
though invisible fingers were clutching at my throat. 

He took my hand, hesitated 
a moment as he had done 
before speaking, then sud- 
denly bent over and touched 
it with his lips. I had no 
suspicion of his intention, 
and it was so strange and 
so unexpected that my eyes 
closed as a mist rose before 
them. 

When I opened them he was near the door, with Be- 
noite following, carrying his bag. He descended the 
stairs quickly and without difficulty, and got into the 
carriage without speaking ; only, when the horse start- 
ed, he leaned out, and, taking off his hat, said gravely, 
“ Good-by, mademoiselle.” 

It seemed to me that my heart was sealed up by a 
stone, like the nuns who were shut in their coffins when 
I saw them take the veil at the convent, and I remem- 
bered the hole in the snow in which on a winter’s day 
I had nearly slept forever. Why had they not left me 
there? 

As long as the carriage was in sight I stood on the 
threshold of the door ; then, when it had disappeared, 
Benoite, who was watching me, said, “ Will you come 
and warm yourself?” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I am coming.” 

But I ran away to the bottom of the park, to the 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. jg^ 

pine-tree on which I had carved a name a few days be- 
fore. 

The fresh sap as it mounted escaped by the gashes, 
and each letter of the name wept. I rested my head 
against the cold bark. To the right and left, under the 
trees, where it was still white in places, there was no 
one'; I was alone. I pressed myself against the friends 
who sympathized thus with my sorrow, and I wept like 
them. 


Pierre to Jacques. 

I write to you from the village inn where I have 
been for two days. 

I can not say that it is equal to my nest at Erlange, 
or that I have a bed with columns, or a Louis XIII fire- 
place. The beams of my ceiling are against a back- 
ground of smoke, and the walls are whitewashed — so 
much so, that all my clothes show the effect, and my 
sleeves are like those of a miller when he leaves his mill 
after work. 

But a traveler must expect such things, and one does 
not always find a chateau for a hotel. The best part is 
that my knee works perfectly well. I can use my 
crutches with the dexterity of a practiced invalid, and I 
should go about more were it not for the train of chil- 
dren who follow me as soon as I appear. 

Happy village, where a lame man can be such a cu- 
riosity, and where a crowd collects to see one go by on 
crutches ! The species is rare, it seems. 


184 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


To amuse myself, I sketch a little. Here a bit of a 
steeple, there a cloud, and a sheep feeding on the cloud. 
It is very fantastic, but my portfolios are not for the 
exhibition, and I would not even offer it — what would 
perhaps be more acceptable — the portrait of Mademoi- 
selle d’Erlange, a head from nature which is certainly 
not bad ! Did I tell you that I asked her to sit for me, 
and that she consented to put on the old-fashioned dress 
of my first evening at her house ? But I could not have 
told you, as my last letter to you was written three days 
before I left. 

Well, the morning of the Monday when I was to 
leave Erlange I remembered my intention to try and 
sketch her fanciful head, and I succeeded beyond my 
expectations. The water-color was very quickly done 
— it is only a sketch ; but I think it would lose in grace 
what it might gain in finish, and I will leave it as it is. 
A smile must be sketched ; it can not be settled by 
A + B, especially a smile like hers; and on the whole, 
taking into consideration the coloring, the likeness, and 
putting modesty aside, it is a little masterpiece ! 

You shall see it; it is worth a journey, and I will 
take it to you so as to have your approval. 

Half laughing, half serious, Mademoiselle d’Erlange 
wished to return the compliment, and she made the 
most frightful little daub you can imagine, which 
makes me think she can never have cared for draw- 
ing. 

It was thus that we spent our last hours together, 
talking and laughing as if the sound of the wheels of 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 185 

the carriage which was to take me away had not re- 
sounded in the court. 

On a funeral-pile, “ solemn and expiatory,” we burned 
together the splints which had imprisoned me for so 
many days, and the good-bys began. 

Undoubtedly, the one who felt most was Benoite, 
whom I kissed frankly on both cheeks, and who would 
have liked, I think, to shed a tear or so. But what 
could she do among such people as we ? Our coolness 
froze her. 

Next I took leave of Mademoiselle Colette with a lit- 
tle compliment, very courteous, very graceful, to which, 
however, she did not respond a word ; then she held 
out her hand to me, and I was off. 

Do you regret now the declaration that you ad- 
vised me to make at the end, and do you see the ab- 
surdity of such a situation — a man speaking of love, beg- 
ging, praying, laying bare his soul so as to obtain a 
word or look at the moment of farewell, and being 
received by a burst of laughter from a foolish little 
cold-hearted girl ? For I am sure she would have 
laughed ! 

In reality, I was never more pleased to have the 
thing over, and to feel that my heart was calm and un- 
moved, like an honest warrior who retires from glory 
with his scars. All this makes me sleep without dreams, 
even on a bag of straw, and it is something to be sure of 
one’s sleep ! 

My leave-taking with Mademoiselle d’Epine will be 
done by procuration. The doctor accepts the office; 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


1 86 

and as for “ One,” I will not speak of him — was it not 
said long ago that “ the best part of man is the dog ” ? 

And now I will leave you ; it is the hour when the 
flocks are let out into the village streets while their 
stables are cleaned ; it amuses me to see them pass, 
and I make some fine sketches. 


Pierre to Jacques. 

You do not believe me, do you, Jacques? You 
knew the truth, and you know that for a month I have 
lied to you, to my head and heart, to everybody, even 
to this love which has taken complete possession of 
me, and which yet I hide as though this incomparable 
happiness of loving passionately were a shameful thing. 

Yes, I love her! Yes, I adore her! And that bra- 
vado which you received this morning was the last. 
Are you satisfied ? 

My letter had no sooner gone just now, than I re- 
called the child who had taken it ; I wanted to stop 
it, to take it back ; my pride was thrown down and 
had vanished so completely that I looked in vain for 
a trace of it, and I asked myself what the ridiculous 
sentiment was that forbade me to confess that I had 
been in love for weeks, because formerly I had vowed 
hatred to the whole human race, and had closed my 
heart and written De profundis above it, and that this 
sudden defeat by a child was revolting to my pride. 

It is the garland of flowers of the fairy-tale against 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


3 7 


which the sharpest sword is broken ! This time it is a 
smile of eighteen which has got the better of all my 
dislikes and mistrusts. 

And I, like a fool, instead of rejoicing, was deter- 
mined to go on doubting, because the pedestal of dis- 
dain and skepticism flattered my vanity and made me 
taller ! 

You are disgusted with me! But you can see, 
Jacques, that I am ready to do penance, and that if my 
heart is in the clouds my forehead is in the dust. What 
more do you want ? 

Yes, 1 believe in the return of youth, for I am only 
twenty this evening, and all my illusions have come 
back. 1 believe in everything, even in goodness ! but, 
above all, in love ; and you must not complain, for it 
contains everything — both wisdom and folly. 

Did you really believe, my friend, that for two days 
I have been drawing sheep on clouds and peasants in 
petticoats ? The truth is, I have just torn up the twen- 
tieth letter 1 have written her since the day before yes- 
terday, and that I shall soon begin another ; and that if 
I can not manage to tell her all the foolish things to 
which my heart tempts me, in the language that I wish 
to speak to her, 1 will go up this evening to Erlange, 
and I will kneel to her in the large room where 1 have 
known her, and I will tell her that I adore her. 

You are thinking of my crutches ! I have made a 
bonfire of my crutches, Jacques— a fire in which I have 
cast all my doubts and all my past life, so as to re- 
member only to-day and to-morrow ; and, to climb the 


1 88 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


mountain-road, do you not think that I have the wings 
of love ? 

How I should like you to know her ! Have I de- 
scribed her to you well in my moroseness, and do 
you understand that the foolishness and childishness of 
which I complained are perhaps what I like best in 
her? Nothing less than this freshness and originality 
were needed to revive my youth and benumbed life, 
as those new perfumes do which are like nothing else, 
and which reach even the most blunted senses. 

She is a charming wild-flower which has blossomed 
between earth and sky for me, and for me alone. Un- 
til now she has loved but the stars and her dreams ; 
the mountain-breeze alone has touched her, and she 
unites in herself all womanly graces with all the fresh- 
ness of Nature. 

With her hand in one of mine, and yours in the 
other, the world is full for me, and my happiness is so 
great that there is but one thing to which I can com- 
pare it — infinity. 

Think of me this evening, Jacques. 1 am going up 
there ; I can stay here no longer. I long for the air 
of Erlange. If I have to write instead of speaking, I 
can find a shelter among the ruins ; and to write words 
of love will not the moonlight suffice ? 

I send you her portrait ; I want you to see her. To- 
morrow the original will be mine, or else you may keep 
this forever ; it will be my last legacy. 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


189 


April jot A. 

“ My God, my happiness is too great, too sudden, 
and it overpowers me ! Help me to bear it well ! ” 
This was my first cry ; and yet, half an hour later, I 
did not know whether I had wept, and my joy was so 
completely a part of myself that I could not remember 
that I had not always had it. 

Yesterday, at about ten o’clock in the evening, I 
was sitting alone in M. de Civreuse’s room — I still call 
it so — and doing nothing, my hands lying idle in my 
lap, but dreaming. 

Benoite had been gone some time ; nothing was stir- 
ring around me, and I felt myself so utterly alone that 
the noise of my own movements made me tremble with 
fright. 

Suddenly, outside, on the road to the village, I dis- 
tinctly heard stones rolling and a man’s footsteps. 

My heart began to beat so loudly that I could count 
its strokes. “Some belated peasant,” I said^to myself; 
“ a peddler who is returning.” But when he was under 
my window the man stopped, and my agitation became 
such that the mark of the wood of the arm-chair I 
involuntarily clasped was printed on the palms of my 
hands. “ It is he ! ” I said to myself. 

He ! Who ? M. de Civreuse, who went off two days 
before on crutches? Impossible! And still, after a 
second, a voice which was restrained, though vibrating, 
and that I knew well, came up to me, and I heard the 
words : 

“ Do not be afraid.” 


190 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


If my life had been at stake, I could neither have 
moved nor spoken. I remained a moment in suspense ; 
then a stone, the size of a walnut, very skillfully thrown, 
came through one of the little window-panes, and fell at 
my feet. 

A paper was folded around it, and when I had re- 
covered from my fright I picked 
it up. 

The writing of M. de Civreuse 
covered two sides ; and this is 
what I read : 

“Colette, forgive the folly of 
this note, and forgive, above all, 
the foolish way in which I send 
it to you; but can anything be- 
tween us resemble what goes on elsewhere ? 

“ Besides, Erlange is an enchanted castle at this 
hour ; everything is shut, there is no door at which I 
dare knock. 

“ Benoite is asleep, 1 am sure ; there is but one lamp 
which shines here; that I know well, for it is toward 
this point, the star of my heart, that I have been walk- 
ing for two hours. 

“ If it had been higher up and farther off, I must 
have come to it all the same to-night, without being 
able to wait for the day, because this word that I am 
going to say to you has been in my heart and on my 
lips for a long time already ; because that for six weeks 
I have repeated it to myself night and morning ; and 
that after having murmured to you so often that I adore 



THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


I 9 I 

you, without your ever hearing, I want now to say it so 
loud that my words may not only reach your ears, but 
go to the depths of your heart. 

“ I love you. But I do not want to tell you now how 
I love you ; I want to see your eyes and your smile 
while I speak to you, and I do not wish to lose one 
minute of your charm henceforth. I know what it is to 
spend two days away from it ! 

“ Now, do not tell me that you will not have my 
love, and that you refuse all the life and passion which I 
place at your feet. Have you never thought, my poor 
child, how easy it would be for a resolute man to come 
in the night to your solitude, to take you and carry you 
off so far that no traces of you could be found ? 

“ Besides, I firmly believe there are things which 
from all eternity are written in heaven. They are rare, 
but they are perfect, for God himself has signed them, 
and our marriage is one of them. 

“ Colette, in this road, where you threw me on my 
knees one morning without intending it, I am waiting 
for your answer, as you found me there that winter day. 

“ Forgive me the broken window ; I think it is the 
sacred window, and I chose it knowingly, because I 
believe superstitiously in it, as the way happiness came 
to me. 

“ When we go away together, if the joy of carrying 
you off is granted me, I will take with you that little 
statuette you know of, to which I have vowed passion- 
ate gratitude, for without it, Colette, I should have 
passed by ! ” 


192 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


As I read, passionate joy filled my heart, and I could . 
not believe in the reality of my happiness. Was it pos- 
sible ? Was it really he? What! he loved me, he had 
loved me for a long time, my wish accomplished, and 
my suffering become a bad dream ? At the same time, 
surprise at his long silence overcame me. Why speak 
so late ? What reason had he for leaving me to weep 
as he had done ? 

Then, after this happy emotion, the old nature re- 
vived in me, and all the elves of mischief that my tears 
had drowned for two days shook their wings and flew 
out together. 

They had been compassionate when I wept, and had 
kept discreetly out of sight ; but this hour of joy was 
theirs, they claimed it, and the wildest ideas mingled 
with one another, each wanting its way. 

“ Say yes at once ! ” counseled my heart, pity- 
ingly. 

“ Never ! ” cried the others. “ Do not forget our 
plans, Colette. He must be made to suffer; do not 
open your hands so quickly ! ” 

So that I did not know to which to listen, and I 
laughed with tears in my eyes, like days when the sky 
is uncertain, and the rain falls mixed with sunshine — 
fine weather or stormy — one does not know which. 

However, I went to the window and opened it. At 
the noise, a profile in the shadow made a sudden move- 
ment. I saw it badly, because I was placed in full light, 
and it was in the shadow. I guessed, however, that it 
was going to speak ; I leaned over, and the strangeness 


THE STORY OF COLETTE . 


193 

of an explanation at a distance suddenly struck me so 
forcibly that my gayety carried the day. 

“ M. de Civreuse,” I cried, “are you on your knees?” 

“ Colette,” he only said, “ answer me, I beg.” 

I had not expected such a tone. As he hoped, it 
penetrated into my very soul ; and agitated, troubled, 
I could not think of a word to say, and I repeated 
mechanically the phrase which was in my head the 
moment before : 

“ Because I had sworn to leave you there a long 
time, for — ” 

“ For — ?” he repeated, anxiously. 

“ For I have been waiting so long.” 

But he did not hear, I had spoken too low ; besides, 
my voice trembled too much. 

He was patient a second more, then he called to me 
in the same tone which had moved me so deeply. 

I was incapable of answering, and I ran away, cry- 
ing: 

“ Wait ! ” 

There were still two blank leaves to my journal, this 
and another. I tore out one, and hastily, without re- 
flecting, wrote this : 

“ Do not carry me off, M. de Civreuse ; it would 
bring you into trouble with the courts ; and, besides, 
there is no retreat where I could be made to stay if I 
did not wish to. 

“ I will tell you the best bolt you can have : my 
heart will be wherever you take me. 

“ Be very sure that I shall not forget Saint Joseph; 


i 9 4 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


he has done even more for me than you think ; and 
there is a certain old woman also, to whom I will tell 
you my obligations, since you are fond of being grate- 
ful. 

“ I will tell you the story some moonlight evening 
like this : first, because I like moonlight ; then because, 
if happiness came to you on a winter morning, it has 
just come to me on an evening of spring.” 


Pierre to Jacques. 

Jacques, we are engaged — give me your hand ; if 
you follow me, I will lead you into paradise. 

The cure of Fond-de-Vieux consents to come and 
marry us here ; workmen are in the chapel, restoring it 
in haste: it will be ready in three weeks, and we shall 
have June flowers to perfume it. 

I can not tell you now how I forced Mademoiselle 
d’Epine to give her consent ; I am not sure that I did 
not use violence ; and in revenge, under pretext of tak- 
ing care of the proprieties, she never leaves us ! 

Strangers and comrades, we were free ; engaged, 
and on the eve of marriage, we are watched, and that 
woman is my torment ! 

At first I thought of breaking another leg, and now 
I am teaching Colette Latin. We do not need much, 
for the word we repeat is always the same ! 

The evening of my marriage, faithful to my plan, I 
shall carry Colette off, if not to India, at least higher up 


THE STORY OF COLETTE. 


195 


than Erlange. Sometimes goatherds pass here, and I 
want no spectators in my Eden. 

In autumn 1 think all will be ready. We are restor- 
ing our ruins, and you must choose your rooms in the 
crumbling towers or elsewhere, one of these days ; all 
is yours. 

There is only one spot which must not be changed. 
You guess which, and you must watch over it, friend, if 
you sometimes come to represent me, during my ab- 
sence : it is the large room with oak panels into which 
Benoite and the good doctor carried me one day uncon- 
scious. 





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D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


RECENT FICTION. 

“ The Leading Novel of the Year.” 


r 


\ HE FAITH DOCTOR. By 

thor of “ The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” 
Cloth, $1.50. 


Edward Eggleston, au- 
“ The Circuit Rider,” etc. 121110. 


“ Dr. Eggleston has made a distinct advance in his literary work in ‘The Faith 
Doctor,’ the latest novel from his pen. Dr. Eggleston s writing is really American 
in its character, without making much parade or profession on this point ; but he has 
taken a new phase of American life in this book, and has treated it very ably, besides 
evincing an increase of literary skill.” — Boston Herald. 

“An excellent piece of work. . . . With each new novel the author cf ‘The 
Hoosier Schoolmaster’ enlarges his audience ar.d surprises old friends by reserve 
forces unsuspected. Sterling integrity of character and high moral motives illuminate 
Dr. Eggleston’s fiction, and assure its place in the literature of America, which is to 
stand as a worthy reflex of the best thought of this age.” — New 1 ork World. 



N UTTER FAILURE. By Miriam Coles Harris, au- 
thor of “ Rutledge.” i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 


“ Rutledge” proved to be one of the most popular works of fiction ever published 
in this country. The author’s host of friends will appreciate her skilliui rendering of 
this new and deeply interesting story. 



NE REASON WHY. By Beatrice Whitby, author of 

“The Awakening of Mary Fenwick,” “Part of the Pioperty,” etc. 
i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 


“A remarkably well-written story, skillfully and effectively told. . . . The char- 
acters are sharply and cleverly outlined, and the author makes her people speak the 
language of every day life, and a vigorous and attractive realism pervades the book, 
which provides excellent entertainment from beginning to end.” — Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 


T 


HE THREE MISS KfNGS. By Ada Cambridge, au- 
thor of “ My Guardian.” i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 


“May unreservedly be recommended as one of the choice stories of the season, 
bright, refined, graceful, thoughtful, and interesting from the fiist to the final page.” 
— Boston Literary World. 



NE WOMANS WAY. 

of “A Conventional Bohemian, 


By Edmund Pendleton, author 
” “A Virginia Inheritance,” etc. i2mo. 


Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

“The author is a Virginian who has written some interesting stories, and who 
steadily improves upon himself. . . . This is a thoughtful, semi-philosophical story. 
There is much discussion in it, but none of it is prosy.” — New \ork Herald. 

“ In this genuinely interesting novel the author depicts one of the most charming 
characters to be found in the vast range of woman’s realm. . . . The close is artistic- 
ally devised, and shows a deep observation. Mr. Pendleton has a brilliant future 
before him in his chosen path.” — St. Louis Republic. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


A NEW HUMOROUS TRAVEL-BOOK. 

nr WO GIRLS ON A BARGE. By 
V. Cecil Cotes. Illustrated by F. H. 
Townsend. i2mo. Cloth, $1.00. 

A bright, vivacious sketch of odd people and curious 
experiences, illustrated by the artist who illustrated “ A 
Social Departure ” and “ An American Girl in London,” 
both of which will be recalled by the good spirits of this 
equally unconventional record of a journey down the Thames. 

“ For something entirely original, piquant, and worthy of rapt attention, we com- 
mend this little volume .” — New York Journal of Commerce. 

“ Describes with great vivacity a vacation trip on an English canal; and the ex- 
periences of the two young ladies and a young gentleman are set forth with a thorough 
appreciation of the novel situations in which the party often found itself. The forty- 
four illustrations are fully in harmony with the light and entertaining character of the 
text .” — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN’S RECORD OF HER LIFE 

IN AFRICA. 

OME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. By Annie 
Martin. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

“ Not in many days has a more interesting volume descriptive of life in a remote 
land been offered to the public. It is so brightly written, so cheery, so pervaded by 
the South African sunlight, as it were, that the reader regrets the rapidity with which 
he finds himself making his way through its charming pages. ” — New York Times. 

‘‘The first chatty book about permanent existence in South Africa. . . . The 
illustrations are all from photographs of native animals and birds, principally the 
ostrich, in various stages of his homely existence. The style of the book is natural, 
unaffected, cheerful, and frequently approaches the humorous.” — New York Herald. 

“One of the most charming descriptions of African experience that have come 
under our notice. . . . The work does not contain a dull page. It is a sparkling lit- 
tle book, of which it would be difficult to speak too highly.” — London At hence um. 

“ With fluent simplicity and feminine animation the author chats delightfully of 
the quaint daily happenings on her husband's farm of twelve thousand acres in the 
Karroo district of Cape Colony. . . . The reader will peruse every page with keen 
enjoyment, and will feel grateful admiration for the clever, plucky, womanly woman 
who calls herself ‘Annie Martin.’ ” — New York Sun. 

“ The author’s style is gossipy, and she has a sense of 
humor that aids greatly in making her book readable. She 
seems to write without an effort, as if she enjoyed it ; and 
before we have gone through the first chapter we become 
warm friends, so that when the final chapter arrives we 
part with the authoress with sincere regret.” —Philadel- 
phia Item. 

“ We commend the volume heartily to the attention of 
our readers, assuring them that it is impossible not to be 
charmed and interested in what it has to tell and what it 
tells so admirably.”— Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 




New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 














































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